Chang-Rae Lee Quotes

My focus is my art, and that's what I love to do. I have to be really passionate in order to do something. I've turned down many things that I just didn't believe in.

Whatever it is that I am working on is what I become obsessed with.

It's that one thing that you're passionate about, that you end up developing tunnel vision for and everything else tends to fall by the wayside. Passion is appealing and universal.

You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.

My goal is not to make popular things. My goal is to make the things I love as popular as I can make them.

I am obsessed with people that are obsessed with what they do.

I've always been somebody who sort of throws himself, you could say, obsessively into whatever thing I'm passionate about.

Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.

Art is a jealous mistress.

I don't believe other people are ever as foolishly excited as I am while I'm working. How could they be? Writers would have to live in trees.

Anything I do, I spend a lot of time. I do it with passion and intensity. I want to be in charge.

I'm an all-or-nothing kind of person, and when I become interested in something, I give it my all.

I think a show can work anywhere if it's done honestly, with integrity, and with confidence.

When you're around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it's not strange, it's just Gaga.

There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It's the art of putting all your energy into one thing; it's the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.

I obsess over things... especially my book projects. It can be very time consuming.

I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.

I love painting so much that nothing else matters.

I only take causes or write about things that I am passionate about, and I do it with a certain flair and a sort of wink and a nod.

Because I'm so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

Music is pretty much all I do.

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.

We only take on projects that we're really passionate about.

I am a person who feels compelled and then gets immersed.

I would take plays and I would cut out all the other dialogue and make long monologues because I felt the other kids weren't taking it as seriously as I did.