Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

I sort of have various sort of theories when people ask me about songwriting because it is a mystery. You don't really know. Sometimes you can do it and sometimes you can't. It's really peculiar.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

We actors are superstitious creatures. We do all the homework, and we put all of the components together, but there's always one key aspect that we're not in charge of, really, and that's magic. You are always on the lookout for where and how that magic is going to ignite.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

There's very few geniuses that come and revolutionize everything. For the rest of us that want to be artists and have something to say, it's a lot of work and a lot of luck.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

The tricky thing about songwriting is that, more often than not, what you consider to be your best work generates a collective shrug, and something you've simply tossed off bowls people over.

The creative processes are so mysterious.

A show is like it's own thing... it's a creation from so many people's talent and so much energy.

There was never an 'a-ha' moment when a spider bit me and I knew I could write songs. For that reason, I don't know if I'm always going to be able to. I want to write songs forever, but it's an elusive thing.

People have talents that are different. Where does the creative flow come from - inside us or from a higher power? I don't ask any questions. I just write it down.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

If a piece of genius comes, it comes, and it if doesn't, it doesn't.

I do more writing by myself than with anybody else. My best thing is sitting...around somewhere with a guitar, and having an idea. You never know where it'd come from. Songwriting is a God-given talent.

Another thing about creation is that every day it is like it gave birth, and it's always kind of an innocent and refreshing. So it's always virginal to me, and it's always a surprise. ... Each piece seems to have a life of its own. Every little piece or every big piece that I make becomes a very living thing to me, very living. I could make a million pieces; the next piece gives me a whole new thing. It is a new center. Life is total at that particular time. And that's why it's right. That reaffirms my life.

There are certain phrases in books of mine, and I don't know where they came from, or how I was capable of thinking up these formulations. It's only in the heat of composition that these things occur to you.

If you think about it enough to have a really articulate answer, you're not doing it right. That's how I feel about art. If your thought process could take you to knowing exactly what you're doing and why, there would be no point in making the art. It would become like propaganda. It's more nebulous than that.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.