Artistic Strain Quotes

Putting together two powerful sets is always difficult. After you really pour it out one night, it's hard to pour it out the next night.

It is my greatest joy to live a really good part, even though it imposes great strain. An artist is tired but proud when he has created a great work of art. So it is with the actor who really lives a great role and is proud of the part he played.

Everything about the music industry takes away from you as an artist. They're always wondering what the next thing is: 'What do you have?' It's a very introverted process.

Once upon a time, I could sing three hours. Now, when you see me say 'I'm done,' I'm done; ain't nothing left till the next night.

Every time I am directing, I question why in God's name I'm doing it again. It's like hitting yourself in the forehead with a hammer.

When you play to an audience, you come away energized. It's the promo that really breaks an artist. Some lad sitting on a box trying to create a drum sound in a dry little studio. Everyone goes, 'Great - okay, now on with my day.' You go back to the bus, and you weep.

I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing. I feel the actors are being put through a kind of nightmarish labor. They're like animals being forced to pull heavy carts of vegetables at incredible speeds.

Mythologies become exhausting burdens, from a writer's perspective.

Directing is exhausting, but not for the actual directing part, when you say "Action!" and give creative notes. As a director, the exhausting part is that you are a professional answer-machine.

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often, succumbs and goes into a decline.

With 'Atonement,' I put a lot of pressure on myself, and then I made an advert for Chanel, which 'broke the camel's back' emotionally.

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

Sometimes the last thing you want to do is to go on stage and bare your soul in front of hundreds of complete strangers. Singing the same songs night after night can remind you of things you'd rather forget.

It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.

When I graduated, I felt a little burned out on taking pictures after so many years of churning out so many for classes.

I didn't want to keep forcing myself to grind out book after book.

You've got to perform in a role hundreds of times. In keeping it fresh one can become a large, madly humming, demented refrigerator.

Oh, you ask me, what is the greatest torture of a person who does portraits for a living? I could fill several volumes with nice nasty stories. I don't know.