Simon Schama Quotes

I like to feel the butterflies in the stomach, I like to go home and have a restless night and wonder how I'm going to be able to accomplish this feat, get jittery. That hunger and those butterflies in the stomach are very essential for all creative people.

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

I want to create a thousand paintings, maybe two thousand paintings, as many as I can draw.

Creative people are very insecure people because they don't know whether people like them or are in awe of them. That insecurity always comes out. It makes them a better actor, I feel.

We know that creative people have all sorts of demons.

I don't go there much. You're thrilled that people would recognize what you're doing in such a grand kind of way. But, just like you don't know if anybody's really going to like what you're doing when you put a record out or if anybody's going to pay attention to it, you can't really go there.

It's still difficult for me to watch my work.

I don't relax. I can't take vacations. I'm obsessive-compulsive, and I worry with every project that I'm going to fail. When it starts to go well, and I sense that something beautiful and important and meaningful is being created, it's a fantastic feeling, and I find it very hard to stop.

Fear is the major cargo that American writers must stow away when the writing life calls them into carefully chosen ranks.

I don't dislike the process of animation... I find it daunting, but only as much as I find everything daunting.

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

I always feel that the book I'm working on is my last book.

No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.

A true artist, in my mind, is willing to fail sometimes, because if you're not brave enough to say yes and follow your gut, it's never going to be good.

A true artist, in my mind, is willing to fail sometimes, because if you're not brave enough to say yes and follow your gut, it's never going to be good.

You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.

I would love to write a song with the Everly brothers. But it's probably best not to work with someone you admire: they'll just show up your inadequacies.

I find that with dance - and with the arts in general - because I want to grow in my performance, I have to come face to face with my own personal challenges.

I put out one album one week, and I'm already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

Everyone sort of has that voice of self-doubt in their head, but as an artist, you relinquish your right to have that voice.

I want to inspire Asian kids to become more artistic and creative rather than feeling that they have to be academic or whatever.

I am quite an insecure person, and I think that, like any director, if I'm asked about my vision for a piece, I feel very vulnerable.

Self-awareness is one of the biggest enemies to creativity.

Each time I work on a film, I say to myself, 'This is it. This is the end.' Because it is so stressful, it's like torture.