Russell Hornsby Quotes

I know that some people work differently, but I have to work from the inside out. It doesn't matter how big the character is, there has to be a truthful core.

My only incentive is to write music that changes me, where the process of making it is a discovery and is true in some way, at that moment.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction - they're always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

Everyone always comes to one point in their life as an artist where you can either let your heart guide you or your ego.

So I always think it's important to allow someone to reveal themself. If you notice something about someone that you like, it could really tell you something about who they are during a time of trial. The truth will come out.

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.

It is important to express oneself... provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.

I know how I want to operate as an artist. And that is by having an honest, genuine dialogue about this kind of screwed up journey I've had that I'm so thankful for.

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

Everything I've written has been personal and touched on things that I needed to deal with in my personal life. So I just feel that writing is great therapy, and the best writing comes from truth, and so I mine my life constantly for that.

Writing a novel is an act of self-annihilation as much as self-discovery. You can kill whole appetites and flood whole depths while plumbing them, but if you are serious about it you also get to put something into the world that wasn't quite there before.

The best writing really does come from the deepest, most private part of you.

I can't play anything until I find something that connects to my life, something I can carry as my secret map or code for the character.

Art is about expressing the true nature of the human spirit in whatever way one wishes to express it. If it is honest, it is beautiful. If it is not honest, it is obvious.

It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing.

The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves.

I don't know if I've ever played a character who's close to me. There have been some elements of myself in different roles. Sometimes, I show one side of myself and then completely conceal the other.

At first, I didn't realize it was gonna be a character. I just thought I was gonna be doing me.

I want to keep an element of myself in every character I play. And maybe that's connected to finding something that you like in every character. Maybe they coincide.

I think your program has to reflect what your basic feelings are. I'll plead guilty to that.

Usually I write about what I care about, which is a weakness but I think also a strength.

I feel like my mission is to be honest with myself. My mission is to share my truth - share, not give. I think that's what an artist is supposed to do: I think they share.

I am excited to show people how, when you get older, you get deeper, you get more raw, you get more honest, and you stop pretending to be the person you think people want you to be. I stopped worrying about what people wanted me to say and just sort of dug deep into my personal arsenal of my mistakes and shameful thoughts.