Ryan Adams Quotes

In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself.

The pre-chorus always flows and the chorus is always a little bit harder for me because I put pressure on myself. I didn't know that there was a proper way to do these things, so I just write what sounds good to me in my ears and then I hope to God that someone else likes it too.

Well, any time you do anything good, it's man versus himself, right? That's the art, the challenge.

All actors are self-critical.

My toughest opponent has always been me.

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

The ordinary man puts up a struggle against all that is not himself, whereas it is against himself, in a limited but all-essential field, that the artist has to battle.

In martial arts, the biggest enemy is self. Inside you struggle because you want to prove something.

I think everyone shares a fear of failure - that you're only as good as your most recent collection. That's definitely a fear, but it's a fear that fuels me, that makes me want to work harder, that makes me take on more challenges.

For me, making music is a continuous learning experience, and I think that it feeds itself.

Everyone who makes music is a good collaborator at their foundation because in order to make music, you have to connect to it in a way that other people can't.

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

I can sit down at a piano or with a guitar and just chug away for hours and be perfectly content with whatever comes out. But when it comes to something that somebody else is going to listen to, then I do feel a great deal of pressure to do something that's exceptional, at least in what I consider to be at the limits of what I can do.

One of the first things I learned about acting was, the only person you compete against is yourself.

No actor who's any good can say truthfully to themselves, 'Yeah, I'm good; I've got this sorted.'

The genuine truth, and I do think about this a lot, is that I'm one of the least competitive people you'll ever meet. Except with myself.

It's still difficult for me to watch my work.

The rivalry is with ourself. I try to be better than is possible. I fight against myself, not against the other.

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.

I am not an insecure person. For me, insecurity comes when something I do does not come across the way I thought it would. It would come if I had nothing more to say as an actor. I have a long way to go!

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

I started writing songs, I guess, when I was about 13 or 14, but I didn't know if they were good enough yet or anything.

I'm in competition with myself and I'm losing.

There were points in my career where I thought, 'Maybe I'm done. Maybe I've written everything there is to write.' Now I've learned that it's just working itself out. You have to let it do it.

We are competing against ourselves.