The album 'Kelis Was Here' sucked the life out of me, and so I went off and studied to be a Cordon Bleu chef. What's great about food is that it's less about who you know and what you look like, and more about if you're any good.
I hope to stay light on my feet, to work in many modes, to seek inspiration always, and avoid the fatal. But, as we all know, it is the price of life to burn out, both metaphorically and literally.
These critics with the illusions they've created about artists - it's like idol worship. They only like people when they're on their way up... I cannot be on the way up again.
That's always the time to quit - when you have nothing to say as an artist and creative person.
Writing is a grueling process for us, and once we finish an album, we go on tour for a couple of years. Plus, we're always very involved in our own business, so we need a break when we come back.
I am constantly amazed at the musicians that are able to do the same thing over and over for 20 or more years. That would drive me absolutely insane.
It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won't come back.
When I don't have a good time making music, I think of quitting a lot. I really do. I can create something else. I'll do something else.
Emile Saint-Blague had been a lively, versatile painter in his youth, but he had abused his energy by painting too many pictures; so that in what might have been the ripe period of his art he had nothing left but ideas. A man who has nothing left but ideas may be of great service to his friends, but he is of no use at all to himself. Emile was certainly an inspiration to his friends.
Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.
Three and a half years in L.A. was enough for me. I would love to go back for short bursts if a film opportunity came up, but it's a unique place, and you can reach saturation point. For me it was a place where creative desire and ambition meets desperation. It's in the air; it's palpable - I just didn't want to be around that.
We haven't been on the same page in years. It is what it is. Sometimes that match burns out. So, no, I don't feel bad about it. It's good. I'm grateful for everything we have done throughout our careers and if there's nothing else to put out, then there's nothing to put out. I'm constantly writing and working. It doesn't stop there.
Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a snug brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy.
I never really got the book together for the thing, so I had all the songs and the characters. But by the time we'd gotten it on the road and I'd been doing it for 18 months, oh God, I couldn't wait to move on to something else.
By the time I finished comedy, I was really burnt out of it. I had had enough. I don't really have a strong desire to prove myself in that area, or to go back to it in any great way.
I'm not inspired by songwriting at all; that took place years ago. I'm pretty well established, as far as my influences go. I don't listen to music anymore. It all sounds the same to me.
At 35, I'm thinking, Oh, I don't have any of that initial inspiration that I had before, all that angst. I always thought I would burn out very quickly.
As an artist, it's possible to get tired of yourself.
When I graduated, I felt a little burned out on taking pictures after so many years of churning out so many for classes.
At film festivals, I put on my sunglasses and go to sleep because I don't want to see my films again.
I've always been much more of a guitar picker, but I began to feel forced into a position of being the epitome of a rock & roll guitarist. Originally, TYA wanted to make it without having to compromise to pop. It worked for a while, but after five or six years, the fun went out of it for me; a lot of the music went out of it.
I don't want to be a full-time member of Pink Floyd all my life.
If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now 'grieving' for 'Calvin and Hobbes' would be wishing me dead.
When you first start writing a song, it's fun, then when you start recording it, it's fun, but by the time you've finished recording it, you're sick of it.
I don't live in L.A. on purpose because I don't wanna be immersed in that. I have to have a real life, with real people, in order to inform what I'm doing; otherwise, it just becomes the snake eating its own tail. Vampirism.
