Pir Vilayat Khan Quotes

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.

I think Balanchine and Robbins talk to God and when I call, he's out to lunch.

I love to create. I love to make magic. I love to create the unexpected.

If you don't think there is magic in writing, you probably won't write anything magical.

Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process--it is, after all, black magic.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

Creating something is all about problem-solving.

Reading a book, watching a movie, going to a play, it's transporting, and very, very exciting. And to be a part of that, creating things with your imagination, whoa.

Creating is a lonely thing in a lot of ways.

I love the passion you go through while you're creating.

I believe in creative work.

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

Experience is definitely the high road once driven. It actually enhances the songwriting and song sourcing process.

Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

I feel like I'm stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it's always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.

I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.

I can concentrate on my art.

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.

If I'm on form and I'm not being bothered too much by mental problems or whatever, I can whip out something good. That's why I've done quite a few overdubs for Tina Turner and things like that, because even before she made this comeback I said yes to her, just because I love Tina Turner.

I love creating and being able to see an idea come to fruition. I love making beautiful things.

I love being able to create something from the page and bring it to life.

Your creativity before it gets formed into words and songs is the actual substance. No one else can see it, right? Unless you give it the shape of a song or a painting or whatever.