Creative Crisis Quotes

The temptation to quit and start over infects every creative process I've ever been in. Frustration and boredom always fuel this self-doubt.

Weeks go by, and I don't paint until finally I can't stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don't want to talk about it, because I don't want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself.

You listen to Handel operas, right? And there are a thousand of them, right? And they all sound alike. If I look back on my work, maybe it's the same thing.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

I had writer's block for almost a year.

I suppose that anyone who does any kind of creative work some time in their life - especially as you grow into middle age! - you come to a time where you really question more and more frequently, whether you have anything else to offer. And at its worst, you feel utterly bereft of whatever creative force it takes to do that work.

That's always the time to quit - when you have nothing to say as an artist and creative person.

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.

In creativity the way will be found for subject to pass into object, the identity of subject with object will be restored. All the great creators have foreseen this turning-point. Today, in the depths of culture itself and in all its separate spheres, this crisis of creativity is ripening.

I became paralyzed as an artist with writer's block.

I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.

Hollywood - an emotional Detroit.

The thing I worry about is, what happens when your talent flees? Because you see that with writers sometimes: they start writing these awful books. And there's something sort of horrifying about it.

Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.'

Feeling I'd scarcely arrived at a style, I now find I'm near the end of it. I'm not quite sure what Late Style means except that it's some sort of licence, a permit for ageing practitioners to kick their heels up.

Blur' is about feeling lost, and on a personal level I would be lying if I didn't mention that this song, for me, was about feeling creatively and artistically lost in the city of all great opportunities, Los Angeles.

When I started this song I was still thirty-three The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set free Keats and Shelley too soon finished, Charley Parker would be And I fantasized some tragedy'd be soon curtailing me Well just today I had my birthday I made it thirty-four Mere mortal, not immortal, not star-crossed anymore I've got this problem with my aging I no longer can ignore A tame and toothless tabby can't produce a lion's roar.

After 'Real Live Woman,' I wasn't sure I'd ever want to make another record.

The worst thing for a singer/songwriter is to run out of songs.

It's always a problem when you're working with people you don't really know. Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting. You know, these month - or two-month-long endeavors that millions of dollars are based on, and the people doing them don't even know each other, or know each other under pressure, or know each other when things are really... Which filmmaking is completely done under in many circumstances. You're under constant crisis, making a movie.

Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.

The one-word cinema wasn't possible for me anymore. I'd hit a wall, a dead end. Therefore I thought I'd turn back.

I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I'm walking a plank.

God, I'm such a lazy writer - I can't even think up new names.

Every artist's problem today is: What will we do with the human?