I wanted a line in a poem to be the hollow ney of the dervish orchestra whose plaintive wail is a call to God. But all I achieved was awkward shrieking. Not even the pure shriek of a reed in the rain.
Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?
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.
That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.
I've never loved composing, because I feel like other people do it better.
If it wasn't so pointless and ridiculous, it would be more humiliating. Also, if there [Hollywood] weren't so many people as bad as myself - equally untalented people - it would be even more humiliating.
Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half.
I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen.
When you're jealous, especially of someone else's art or creations you automatically put up these selfish walls that reinforce your stupid ideas. It's hard to pull those walls down and look at what you're hiding. Look at your own weakness and realize that the jealousy came from knowing that you're intimidated by someone else's work, and that when you compare it to your own, you fall short.
Writers end up writing stories-or rather, stories' shadows-and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough
I am a failed visual artist.
Art scares me. I don't feel cool enough to be an artist.
I am dissatisfied with everything I have ever written and regard it all only as a preparation for that one work which probably I don't have it in me to write but which I hope I can go on trying for.
The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.
I'll never be a good writer, and no chance of being a good actor.
I'm never going to be Tolstoy.
After 'Ra.One,' 'Cash,' 'Tum Bin 2' did not work, I almost lost my confidence as a director.
I went to art school for four years to learn a very expensive lesson - that there are many other artists who are way better than me.
I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.
Most artists think they're frauds anyway.
I look at you and you look at me and deep in our hearts know it That you weren't much of a muse, but then I weren't much of a poet
Unless you sell millions, I think it's very hard as a writer not to feel anxious about what you put out. I always feel I could do better.
I'm very hard on myself as an artist to begin with, so I personally don't even think I have the proper chops to sell a record, but people think differently.
I don't think I was a good comedian.
Let me tell you, if I could write one-tenth as fast as some of my friends, I'd be made. I'd be it. But instead I happen to be, in the tree of life of writers, down at the bottom, with the hematodes.
