Paul Horgan Quotes

I just try to be true to myself and write about things I'm passionate about. I think what most people don't like about movies is they can tell that most movies are a product, and they don't mean that much to the people who make them.

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

That's what George wrote! He wrote it. Why change it? There was this European company that I was speaking about awhile ago - course, didn't nobody know what Porgy was.

Of course, I write. I have stories to tell. But I don't want to do superficial stuff any more.

Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.

I knew what I didn't want, and I knew whatever it was going to be it had to be believable and it had to come from me and I had to drive it. The way I write is very honest and when I think of the music that I listened to growing up, I loved it because I believed it.

I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.

You have to be able to give the people what you want in your way. And that's how you, to me, become a person that they love and not just a fly-by night actor.

When I open my mouth and sing, the truth comes out. When I write, the truth comes out. I can't lie. That, I think, is one of the strongest elements of my music. When people talk about my writing as though I'm doing it from an accountant's perspective, it really pisses me off.

I don't think you can separate a person's "style" and his persona. If you're writing or improvising honestly, you will inevitably reflect who you are.

I think it's important to be able to write stuff that's personal to you and stuff that you'll really be able to understand what you're singing about and be able to truly sing it. Because if you're singing a song that someone's written for you and you really can't relate to it, it's hard to sing that song.

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future.

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

It's a weird job because making music or writing a song is a personal thing... and it kind of has to be. You can always tell when people are faking.

Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason…Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.

I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think.

I care about what people think of my heart, my music, my passion.

There is some pressure when you are a woman doing what I do that you must support all other women unconditionally, no matter what they're projecting, or writing, or producing, or putting forth as their art. I think that's equally arbitrary and random and unfair, and kind of sexist. The secretly sexist way. I have really high standards for what I think is funny. I have that for everything, and I think it would be disingenuous of me to blanket-ly love everything a woman has produced simply to make a statement that we're all in this together.

Music is the one thing in which there is no use trying to deceive others or make false pretenses.

I feel like you can't really be truthful as an artist and empathize with the human experience, unless you know your truth and you're not living a lie. So I'm learning through it, and it's making me a better person, and it's making me a better artist, I think.

I'm not trying to write for the masses. I don't care.

I would say, if you're a musician then you probably have some capacity and some intuition. You've got to trust that intuition and be true to what compels you. There will be a lot of things along the way that will try to remove you from that, and if you do, then I think you are diminished. If you stay with it, then you have something that's real.

[People] want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. ... Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then.