Zakk Wylde Quotes

I'm a big proponent of letting songs tell me what they wanna sound like.

Self-examination with a close-up mirror in an antiseptic environment is what Nine Inch Nails is based on.

I don't think I approach my songs differently from other artists. You get a big picture of it, and you imagine the song and hear and feel it, and that big picture is like a snapshot, and it comes to you as fast as it takes to click a camera.

I'm sure there is a group of people that assume Nine Inch Nails is just noise and chaos - or whatever it might be dismissed as, and sometimes is.

Any time you write a song, you kind of know what you want from it. You know what you're getting from it.

I'm just thinking about the vision for how I want my music to go and what I want it to say. I'm always creating in a way, even if it's just thinking about it.

I was never totally sold on this idea that I'm just a musician. I wanted to be the Tim Burton of music.

I have my songs ready in my head, gather the guys, play it and then let them go with it. [The music] finds its way, we do what the music says to do......the song is the producer.

When I'm writing my album, it's totally my world. Even though it's myself and another producer creating the project, Conceptually it's more under my power and on my own terms. At the same time, it's a different type of pressure because I'm ultimately speaking, I'm solely responsible for the end result.

If I set out to sculpt a standing man and it becomes a lying woman, I know I am making art.

I love photography and I love the art of photography. So when I'm working with high-level art photographers, I give them artistic freedom because I want that for myself when it's my turn to do my work and I never try and control it or say I'll only do this or I want it like that.

When I'm directing I'm working from 100% of my brain, but when I'm acting I'm working from my heart.

My analysis of the situation was that Roman Polanski wasn't trying to break us down or get a performance out of us by destroying us. He was absolutely, very simply, trying to recreate this clear picture in his head. And the pictures he creates are absolutely perfect, and they are exactly what he saw in his head.

The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

I keep plastering it until it comes around to what I want, in terms of all I know and think about painting now, as well as in terms of the initial observation.

It seems the deeper, truer personality of the artist only emerges in the making of decisions... in refusing and accepting, changing and revising.

When I started, I was 23 years old directing my own music videos; I'm co-producing on my album; I'm hands-on with everything. I'm more than just a pretty boy: I'm an artist. I'm not saying I'm a hip-hop music artist, I'm an artiste.

A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.

I approach music - and this sounds crazy - as though I'm Phil Spector, and I'm cranking out these pop stars and forcing them to do all this stuff - except they're all me. But I'm not, like, transgendered.

Usually I'm able to imagine something and it comes out as I imagined, more or less.

One paints with one's head, not one's hand.

If I'm collaborating with an artist I like to give them my point of view and if they don't want to take any of my recommendations it's fine, but it's hard otherwise.

The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand participation in their vision.

Being in the studio, it's more of a controlled environment, where you can be Salvador Dali and sit back and look at the painting. And you can go, 'Ah, you know what? Maybe a little bit more red over here...maybe add some blue over here.' You can sit back and look at the painting.

Music is the most important thing. I'm thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space