Jules Feiffer Quotes

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.

Songwriting is ... all about intuition - this thing pops into your head for a reason and it's up to you to follow it. It's like there's a spirit, or intuitive network, that comes through all of us, but most people don't take the time to think about it or remember it. These little things pop into our heads - it's just a process of intuition. The initial thought comes in a baby state, and you work on that some more.

You either have an imaginative mind or you don't. All of my writing is God-given. I don't write my stories - they write themselves.

The beginning of art is not reason. It is the buried treasure of the unconscious...that unconscious which has more understanding than our lucidity.

I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.

Oh yes, much, because music is just something that comes to you. You don't question it.

I don't consciously go out looking for themes. They attach themselves to me.

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

I don't really go through a process, it goes through me.

Sometimes I feel as if sections of my ballets were done for me - that I didn't do them myself.

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

I write and draw from the gut. I often don't know what my stories are about until they're done.

I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?

I'm not much given to making shamanistic remarks about all this, but I'm a great believer in the dream life. If I can carry without spilling whatever it is that drips into my head in the night to my desk, then that's valuable.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

I don't make judgments about my own work, and I don't analyze it; I just let it happen. That applies to everything I've done.

An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making. Only after a piece of music is done does my frontal cortex allow me to organize what might be trying to come out of my subconscious.

There are some projects where you have to just start doing it, and, after a while, the show starts telling you what it wants to be. You put your spirit in and, after a while, something bigger takes over, and it turns out to be much more fun and creative than what it was at the beginning.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

I create by feeling rather than by intellectualizing.

I do more writing by myself than with anybody else. My best thing is sitting...around somewhere with a guitar, and having an idea. You never know where it'd come from. Songwriting is a God-given talent.