I love the craft of acting, I love learning, I love everything that comes with the new project; the whole process is totally intoxicating to me.
I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.
When a play is really cooking, there's nothing like it.
Making movies is eating candy. It's a very expensive candy, so you value when you can do it. So when you can do it twice at once, it's like, you know, a kid in a candy store!
When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.
If it were up to me, I'd rather create things that last long-term, but my thrill comes from reflecting what's going on now.
When I'm in the studio, I'm looking for creativity I haven't matched yet, a feeling I haven't felt. It's a high.
Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.
When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.
I lean into fear because I feel like that excites me as an artist.
For me, doing a show, the excitement of singing live, and the possibility that you're not gonna be perfect - that's the thrill of it.
I enjoy painting. It's an incredible release of tension, and I feel very excited doing it. I squeeze out some wonderful red paint, and I get a thrill. My heart starts beating faster. It's almost a sensual thing working with these thick acrylic paints. I almost want to put my hands in.
It is hard to describe the thrill of creative joy which the artist feels when the conviction seizes her that at last she has caught the very soul of the character she wishes to portray, in the music and action which reveal it.
I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice.
Nothing can grab you by the throat - or heart or soul - like an orchestra. It's undeniably the most engaging and exciting way to bring a score to life.
You often feel like you are on a high wire with no net productions because you have to rely on spontaneity and come up with ideas on the spur of the moment - and then what happens is that there is electricity to it that gets caught.
I had this totally impossible dream of being an actress. Trust me, just because I'm lucky enough to be doing this doesn't make any of this less of a pipe dream. And nothing gets my juices flowing like a really great performance. To see someone on stage, I get really excited.
If you're in the groove, you get something back from the audience that is so exciting and rewarding that no film or television work can possibly compete.
This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.
I just love drawing on past human cultures; that's a thrill for me.
