Kim Jee-woon Quotes

My ultimate search has been for a muse.

The different bodies of my work end themselves when there's no more discovery to be had.

Very rarely is there any confusion as to when a painting or a song is finished. You just know when it's done.

I have let half-decades elapse between books because books have to be writte and writing is awful, but if you are the type of person who makes things, there is no profit in worrying about how or why or when the next project will come into being beyond simply acknowledging that it is inevitable that it will be very soon.

The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books.

I create work, and I devote myself to the creative process, and I try to, you know, stay pure in that process and be worthy of the messages that I receive.

My writing is inspired by just about everything, yet I am unaware of so much of the process.

Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.

We're all kind of basically involved in the same thing, putting up a blank of some kind and filling it in.

Even if you're not releasing songs, the act of creativity is important. That's the part I love, when you're in the moment. The rest of it I'm not particularly interested in at all.

Art is not the kind of thing where you get what you put into it all the time. So I learned to not expect anything other than the sort of joy of having a poem in front of me.

I know how demanding the process of creation is.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.

I draw the line at letting people into my songwriting cave. To me, that's where the alchemy happens and where the mystery is.

It's hard to predict and to say what goes on inside the minds of an artist, but that's what makes them an artist. That sense of creativity. That thing that makes them tick is probably the very thing that pushes them to the extremes that sometimes can cause, you know, fatalities and things that, you know, that end up not being good.

Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.

When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way.