James Goodnight Quotes

I've written the best work I know how. And I'm appreciative of the people who read it and care about the work - and that's pretty much the end of that.

I wouldn't do a project if it weren't a story I wanted to tell. That's rewarding in itself, as a writer, if you're working on a story that you enjoy telling.

Whatever the reviewers feel about 'The Casual Vacancy', it is what I wanted it to be, and you can't say fairer than that as a writer.

Every artist wants an audience, and it's incredible to me how books take on a life of their own and reach people whom you could never meet. That's what got me interested in writing in the first place.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other. It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn't mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond... a good feeling about his art.

As an artist, it feels good that we've created something that is connecting with the audience, which is what we always strive to do.

I have to do films for myself, films that make me learn. I also have to be an entertainer.

What is important is satiating my creativity as an artiste.

I just wrote what I wanted to be reading.

For me, to have had an impact with anything that you've done, whether it's a painting, a photo, a poem, or something that you've created, just that experience is enormous. You don't get that all the time.

When I saw music as a means to an end - more fame, more money, dating celebrities - that's when things have gone terribly wrong. Now my life is focused on just trying to keep making music. Because when it's really good, it's just the most remarkable feeling on the planet.

I make music to process - because I have to, not for praise or accolades or reactions.

You definitely do not do films for that particular reason. You do them for yourself, for your satisfaction of creating this thing with characters and watching these characters take on real life - that's all you care about.

I haven't many years left ahead of me and I must devote all my time to painting, in the hope of achieving something worthwhile in the end, something if possible that will satisfy me.

When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.

What inspires me today is a desire to get closer to an understanding of what my artistic capacities are with the hope of organically sharing my gifts with an audience in the most heightened way I possibly can.

I love the freedom of writing and then I love the realization of directing. I can't favor one or the other. I enjoy both parts of the process.

I'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit.

Being an actor/ writer is a responsibility and a burden and a gift. The responsibility to me is that you can't just wait to be cast into something and then you create the role. You almost have a voice inside of you telling you what you might want to play and be able to play. It's hard, but once that thing comes out of the printer and you hold those warm pages to your cheek it's great. It's a huge sense of accomplishment.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

I enjoy the hell out of writing but don't like what follows: promotion and publicity, which I always strive to keep to a minimum, sometimes to my publisher's dismay.

If I didn't get joy from acting, I wouldn't do it. My passion for acting is growing and I love telling good stories and inspiring stories and helping to give a little happiness to the world and perhaps get the audience to think about different issues.

In the right situation, acting on television can be extraordinarily satisfying creatively. But that's incredibly rare. Otherwise, it can be like working in a really remunerative coal mine. That's the down side.

Writing has nothing to do with publishing. Nothing. People get totally confused about that. You write because you have to - you write because you can't not write. The rest is show-business. I can't state that too strongly. Just write - worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all. What matters is what happens to you while you're writing the story, the poem, the play. The rest is show-business.