Armistead Maupin Quotes

When you design a collection, you have to start with what you love and what you believe in. Unless you do that, you can't stand behind it, so there's no point in doing it.

Whatever I was writing at the time, I knew there was no market for it and never would be, because there’s never a market for true art, so my main concern was always to have a job that didn’t require me to write or think.

I've always been drawn to the best writing that I can find. I don't care if it's in movies or theater or whatever - if you want to be in front of an audience, you have to do writing you believe in.

Everybody wants to write a hit song, but in Nashville people want to write the best song, which was my original intention as a singer/songwriter. ... I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.

Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.

The only thing that's authentic about what a writer writes is his work.

I do not feel any artist can produce great art without putting great personality into it. It is always a piece of you that goes on the screen or the canvass.

Everything I do is personal. I have never made a movie that didn't have very strong personal resonance.

When I write a book... it's the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that's the only way you can write righteously. I have to ask, 'What do I want to hear?' not 'What do people want to hear?'

It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.

You can tell an honest artist from one who's just given all their songs.

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

When you're an artist, you can't write with the intent of affecting anyone.

Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.

I know what I do. I know what I put on film. I know what I try to do. I don't want to talk about what I've done.

The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

Because many of the films I've made have had an intellectualedge, it's harder for me to lie. It's harder for me to go to peoplewith money and say I don't care about art, all I care about iscommerce; all I really want to do is make money.

A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.

Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy-it's the occurring that's hard.

I know my fans look up to me and that's why I make my songs so personal; it's all about things I've experienced and things I like or hate. I write for myself and hope that my fans like what I have to say.

I would only make a movie that I believe in. If I didn't believe in it, it would be unworthy.

The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist.

I'm not the kind of writer that can wake up and say, "Okay, I'm gonna write a song today," and have that song be the kind I would want to record. The songs of mine that I end up liking are songs that come from real experience. They're like chapter titles in my life.