Artistic Drive Quotes

I've got at least two major project ideas that I've been chewing on for several years in my head and I've been trying to resist them both. But I have learned over the years that when they don't go away and they're still in there, you probably have to resign yourself to the fact that you're going to do something about them.

Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.

What motivates us is always new music.

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

I did a couple of movies when I was little. You have to be possessed to be an actress, and I was not possessed... It was not my life's passion.

When I got into art school, I thought it was paradise. I wanted to be an artist so much that I was really driven and nothing could stop me.

A secondhand wardrobe hand clothes doesn't make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, or HIV. I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay doesn't make one witty... the only thing that makes one an artist is making art.

That's the biggest part of doing comics: You have to create stuff that makes you want to get out of bed every morning and get to work.

It's hard to predict and to say what goes on inside the minds of an artist, but that's what makes them an artist. That sense of creativity. That thing that makes them tick is probably the very thing that pushes them to the extremes that sometimes can cause, you know, fatalities and things that, you know, that end up not being good.

I've never really cared if I was famous for my music. It was just something I had to do.

It's painful to consider anything but writing.

One thing about being in Metallica is I've always felt challenged.

I think it's very rare, as an actor, that you get to a script, or an idea of a script, and you go, "Oh, I just have to do that!" It fell into place very quickly.

When I write a film, there's a particular thing I am wrestling with and the question or concern I'm dealing with has to be big enough for me to dedicate a year or two of my life. If the question isn't big enough, or rich enough, I'll lose interest.

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

The only thing that drives music is the people who are making it.

I believe that every artist, in one way or another, is a wounded person. It's not natural to make art.

I don't know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't have to. But it is a compulsion. You don't choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

I gave myself over to music and art a long time ago, so I don't get to relax and I don't get to sit still. The best I can do is constantly create my own environment so it benefits what I need to accomplish in the next step.

I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.

I don't know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven't met any, and I'm kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records.

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

There's always hunger to create because I believe that's what I do. I believe that's what I'm supposed to be doing.

I don't try to be difficult. I just care so much about these albums that I get crazed sometimes when I'm making them.

I'm an artist in my heart.