Rachel Cusk Quotes

There is no privilege in restriction. In other words, I disagree with people who say restriction makes you more creative. I think that's a misleading slogan. I might have been more creative without them than with them.

I think it's better when you're natural, when you just do whatever you want, instead of doing classes where I see all these other people holding back because they've been trained with certain skills or techniques. I'm like, whatever.

It's really easy to project this whole ideology of what being an artiste is, and I'm just not down with intellectualizing it. I just think, if you feel like doing something, then do it.

It was liberating to do comedy. It felt like playing in a jazz band.

If I can feel freedom then I can create.

No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural.

I'd like to shut off all the noise and allow people to be creative without all the judgments and standards that we think we have to follow.

I think there's all these unknown things you can tap into when you just leave things open, and nothing is forbidden. Then you allow yourself to mold that thing that has been created by freedom and spontaneity and flexibility. That's why I avoid limiting performances of actors and characters.

If you do things, whether it's acting or music or painting, do it without fear - that's my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there's nothing to lose.

In art, anything goes, and if it goes, it goes.

When I went into film, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to do whatever I wanted to do. Maybe that was a good thing in the beginning. I had blinders on, and I charged forward.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

When I'm singing, I'm another person. I can be really free, in the sense that I can do whatever I want.

I've worked with a lot of first time directors; in fact, I enjoy it because there is a certain beginner's mind that they bring into a project that isn't loaded with the way things have been done before. There's a certain freedom to it.

When I'm at a show, I'm there to have fun. Let's just not care for a moment. So this cake in your face is to make you lose your mind. And it's not about caring about whatever you are wearing and caring what other people are thinking about you. Out of the context, I'm trying to develop something else.

I think that, with anything creative, you should have the freedom to experiment, and that experimentation means not feeling totally responsible for how other people perceive it.

Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

I don't like to box myself in when I'm composing.

I'm not in a certain type of genre, and I can't be categorized or pigeonholed. That leaves a wide range of what I can do for myself, for other people, and with other people.

Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.

Being in a space that's not a studio, it kind of creates an openness of 'We can do whatever we want here; we're not on the clock.'

I like that the art world isn't regulated.

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.

I can really write what I want. I can take time; I can do nothing for a year. That is paradise.

This world has a way of trying to homogenize you. Trying to sanitize you. Trying to scrub you of your unique divine genius. This world wants to make you regular.