The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.
To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if I can write it; otherwise, I won't want to.
It's intimidating any time to have a piece of art that someone else created, and that person says, 'Let's see what you created based on what I created.'
The hardest thing is in terms of the drawing, because, you know, I really have to work to keep my hand fluid, and I've done a lot of recovery, but it's not the same as it once was.
I had always heard that theatre is for 'serious' actors but after actually having rehearsed day in and day out, I realize how challenging it is.
I'm a working actor so I never really pick a film because of a genre, and I don't really turn them down because of genre. Anything that's unlike the picture I just finished is always more interesting.
I'm saying nobody's got the guts to be a J. Cole. Nobody's got the guts to be a Kendrick Lamar. We need more of them... Everybody wants to go the easy route.
Technically I feel total fluidity in writing. I feel there's nothing technically that I can't do the way a certain sort of pianist feels that. But that doesn't mean it comes easily. It doesn't.
As a writer, you're always trying to say the best thing. You're always thinking about what's the best thing to say, and what's the hardest way to say it, and what's the best line? Sometimes the best line is the simplest line. Sometimes the best line is the line that evokes more feeling than actual wordsmithing.
Lyrics are really, really hard, I think, or at least they're really hard for me. Some people can channel lyrics faster. I find them very hard to find, so because of it, they take me a long time, and I really think about them.
It's really fun to go back and forth from acting projects to directing projects. You don't have as much responsibility when you're acting, but you have more fun. But then you miss having that responsibility, and so you go back and torture yourself and make a movie.
Starting a band is the easy part. Once you've formed the band, you have to tell a story, and that story requires songs. And not just good songs, but great songs. After a while, great songs won't do - they have to be the best. Success doesn't make it any easier. Each time I start a new record, it's a brand-new search.
Acting is one element in a film. Directing is sort of the painter using all of those elements - sound and music and camera and putting it all together. And that can be fun and exciting. If you fail, it's incredibly upsetting - much more upsetting than when you're an actor. But when you succeed it's incredibly, incredibly exciting, so I like the risk of it all.
We have to take risks with art. If we don't, it all becomes a bit boring.
There's nothing wrong with doing comedies, and I'm not against comedies, either, but I always want to do stuff that keeps me off my guard and gets me out of my comfort zone.
The music business is a crazy game, especially for somebody like me who is really a purist about the art. Trying to balance the pressures of commercialism, it's a tightrope. It's a fine line between sticking to your guns and insanity.
At art college, I started to do music and then painting and drawing - and that would have been my ideal life, to be an artist and be paid for it, to be able to create stuff. I realized it was difficult, but I don't know if I had the application for it.
I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What's the point?
When you get a character that you're just starting to work on, it's the most exciting and most terrifying feeling because you have endless hours of diving in, researching, reading, and decision-making.
I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
The thing I tried to remember when I was younger was 'Do something that's at least as good, if not better, than the last thing you did.' So I started with Brian De Palma and Sean Penn. I had a pretty high bar to start with.
I would love to do some motion capture work just to be able to challenge myself.
Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.
I can't copy nature.
The main thing as a director, you always want to have a bit of a worry about the material you're going to get yourself into. You want to be a bit scared of it so that you have that excitement of having to climb the mountain.
