John Zorn Quotes

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

The more you create, the more ambitious you become with your projects. Short films were a direct result of over 200 web series sketches and vlogs. After you create enough 2-minute videos, you start to wonder what else there is. Deadlines and discipline and quantity with a focus on quality have always been what keeps me going.

If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you're too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you're not a very good pianist, you're limited to the same patterns.

I think most producers and MCs are constantly in this competition, but it's usually with yourself. It's usually wanting to be innovative: wanting to catch yourself when you're doing the same thing or throwing out the same art you've already done.

I'm super inspired by Master P and early moguls. They were doing everything. I wanna do that, too. Twenty-six albums in one year. It's possible. Very possible.

For one, the whole concept of 'Live From Here' - writing a song every week - was like composition bootcamp.

I'm a songwriter-I'm obligated to keep pushing myself.

I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that.

It is still true that it is easier to compose a poem in the form of a manual for adjusting a VCR than it is to write a piece using just tuning as a symphony.

I have ideas every day, and if I'm not carrying a pad of paper, I'm typing it into the notes thing on my iPhone, and it's just ridiculous - idle hands are the devil's plaything, and I can't be the devil's plaything. I got to be the devil; I got to be the guy making it all happen.

Often, I work out of my work. One work takes me to the next thing.

What drives me is to still feel creative and like I'm pushing myself as an artist.

I always want to write something better than the last book.

It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.

I had a history for starting something and maybe getting halfway done. Then I'd see the same thing I was doing on the bestseller list! My ideas were right, but I hadn't done them fast enough.

Part of your job as an artist is to push yourself and make sure your creative juices are flowing.

When the ideas are coming, I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time.

For me, competition is good; that is what keeps me on my toes and keeps me going. I am always trying to better my own work, do better than my earlier films... do films that are challenging and exciting for me.

I have a folder in my office with about 400 ideas in it. So it will take me another 40 years to get through those.

If you're not frustrated, you're not producing.

I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

I have great ideas, but the follow through is always really difficult for me. As my kid gets a little bit older, if I feel like I have a little bit more time on my hands, I'd like to get more into developing ideas and writing things.

Mozart wrote so many works in his thirty-five years that it would take a lifetime just to write out the notes. We literally do not know how he did it.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

I always have this imagination, something I want to use. I don't understand the idea of leisure time.