Artistic Spark Quotes

Whenever I write a new song, it always happens when I come back from Europe or Egypt or something like that. It's always from travelling.

Gershwin inspired me very much. The concept of 'That Lucky Old Sun' was inspired by 'Rhapsody in Blue' - not influenced, but inspired.

Usually, a number of events will be going on around me to start me on a book. What I mean is, I will have read a poem or seen a picture that is lingering in my mind.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said 'What the hell is this?!'

Whenever I see a Frans Hals I feel like painting, but when I see a Rembrandt I feel like giving up!

I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I got out, dried off, went upstairs, and finished the book in about 50 days.

For me, the creative process for me always starts in a personal place. I step away from my iPod or any records or CDs.

Songs are out there - they're waiting to be grabbed. I start with a phrase, musical and lyrical, words like 'I don't think so' and a nice riff. It rolls from there.

I'm visually stimulated, so I watch TV, movies, even Pinterest. A song could come from something as simple as being words splashed across a billboard or changing everyday turns of phrases.

I found myself in Zurich Airport. I'd done a TV show, oddly enough, with Mavis Staples. That's the way they do it in Switzerland. And I'd had a bit of a late night with members of her band. And I was - my flight was delayed. And I was sitting in the airport, and I just came up with the idea. And by the time, we landed at Heathrow, I'd pretty much sort of got it.

I get inspired by my friends, and if a friend is a writer, that is even deeper.

For years I walked around with the phrase "Green River" because I had seen that on a soda fountain drink when I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and I went, 'Gee, I like that.' Another one was "Lodi", which I thought sounded really cool. I got this cheap little empty plastic notebook at my local drugstore, and bought a little slab of filler paper and the very first title I wrote in it was "Proud Mary". I had no idea what that title meant.

Sometimes, you don't know where your inspiration's going to come from.

I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.

I always feel like there's something magic in recording studios. There's a reason good music continues to be made in them. It's just some mojo element.

Sometimes a chord on a guitar will somehow spur some thought in your head, and you will write a song about it.

Out of the red and silver and the long cry of alarm to the poet who survives in all human beings, as the child survives in him; to this poet she threw an unexpected ladder in the middle of the city and ordained, 'Climb!

A novel usually begins, in my experience, with a thought or image that won't leave me alone.

My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.

Photographs are not only points of reference... they're often triggers of ideas.

I think there'll always be a kid with a guitar with a song in his heart that's going to turn me on - that's as far as I can see. Whether lots of people agree with that, I'm not sure.

I begin my pictures under the effect of a shock which I feel and which makes me escape from reality... I need a point of departure, even if it's only a speck of dust or a flash of light.

Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.

When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood orseason of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.

All of the good things that surround art - you have to embrace the idea that it could be a complete disaster. I think that's what gives it its artistic sparkle is that it really could crash and burn at any moment because you're going out on a limb and being very personal.