Jackie DeShannon Quotes

I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?

I'm literally open to any medium that will have me.

There is a general knowledge that I am multi-dimensional, that when you are creative you do a lot of things.

I do like to be creative and I'm very lucky that I've been given different areas in which I'm able to do that - whether it be film or television or theatre or whatever. I'm also still into music and recording.

I never got tied down to any social scene. I was just into creating stuff. And I think, even today, that's how I'm able to work and move between so many different genres - I want to be part of what's happening, I want to make new things.

My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.

If I hadn't done 'Harry Potter,' I would have gone and done years of art. I really do love it, and I'd love to write.

I love acting, of course, and I would still love to keep acting, but I want to try my hands at so many things.

One of the things that's good for me is that I can go from one art form to another.

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.

In the deepest hour of the night I confess to myself three things; I would die if I was forbidden to write, forbidden to love, or forbidden to fashion....love each other, and celebrate the art and lifestyle of music.

Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human.

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.

Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out. Even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, and although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed.

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world.

I'm a soul maker. I write songs. I'm making cartoon shows. I'm planning on putting stuff out myself on my own, on a TV station online. I'm not limiting myself. I'm doing it all at once.

Who is my role model and how long can I keep this going? I just move around and do different things and come back to music, try making films and come back to music, write children's books and come back to music.

The important thing about doing art and writing is that we are using our voices and using them really, really loudly. And to any girls or young women who want to write comics, I tell them, "You have to use your voice. You have to take up space." We have to fight to be heard. No one else is going to fight for us.

I love to teach, I love to draw, I love animals. So I don't feel like I am relying on one thing to lead me in my career.

I have no idea where my career is going. I just make the best music that I possibly can.

I've always been an all around creative person. Song writing and writing are great ways for me to express myself.

Somebody said that writers are like otters... Otters, if they do a trick and you give them a fish, the next time they'll do a better trick or a different trick because they'd already done that one. And writers tend to be otters. Most of us get pretty bored doing the same trick. We've done it, so let's do something different.

My friend advised me to go into studying art, which at first shocked me because art was so easy. It was just something I did, like breathing or brushing my teeth. It couldn't be a job. I had a much more difficult time writing plays, making myself sit at that typewriter and finish those things.

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs.