J. Michael Straczynski Quotes

As kids, we spontaneously sing and dance and tell stories, and along the way, someone comes and says, 'No. You shouldn't be doing that.' And we slowly begin to unlearn our passions. I think you have to hold on to those things.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

I love singing. I love it, and it doesn't feel like a chore. It's an expression.

Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered by will, a childhood how equipped for self-expression with an adult's capacities.

I loved painting and drawing for many reasons. One of them was that all it really required was me, a pencil and a pad. It was something I was passionate about, and still am.

Labels don't mean anything to me. I'm trying to play as passionately as I'm able to. If they want to call that cool, that's fine. Just spell the name right, is the formula.

Write what you care about.

I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head.

I'd love the opportunity to do something where I could really give my opinion, my feisty side - it'd be fun!

We feel more and more intensely about the music we make. It's unexpected, and not always what you would think of in Beach House. It's all art in the end. We aren't making records because we have to; it's because it's what we want to express.

This isn't about the money. This is just for me. I love music.

I'm less desperate now to express what's inside me, that's true - I act these days because it keeps me awake and interested, an eternal student.

I like to be creative and I'm lucky that I have a couple of different outlets, and I'm lucky that I get to use them.

I've never tried to be anything but me. Even with Slipknot, where it can almost feel like a roll sometimes, it's still a part of who I am. It's a very strong and passionate part of who I am, and I'm lucky enough to have an audience that is really open to what I do.

When you write a song, you don't ask if it's good or not, or if it's gonna sell. When you write a song, you ask whether you've reached deep inside your heart and whether it's honest.

Dancing is my obsession. My life.

I just love photographing. I don't do it for anyone else.

I like to have a lot of different creative outlets.

With art and the work you do, it has to be constantly dictated by what you're feeling and where you want to go with it.

Music was my salvation, the thing I loved most and did best. Whatever was fun, I'd go do that.

I love creating things that come from my gut and my soul.

This goes for our songwriting as well as our success as a band - the minute we stopped chasing what we thought people wanted to hear and started writing things that moved us, that's when people started paying attention.

I like the idea of creating from your inner youth. You don't have to think too hard about it. Just make what feels good.

We don't follow trends; I don't think we even set trends. We just do our own thing. We just do what we love. That's why Arch Enemy sounds like that.

I loved that playing the guitar wasn't easy. It was pain, but it was my pain. And then it became joy. My joy.