Creative Discernment Quotes

I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.

If I'm writing the music, and I don't feel like its really connecting inside, then I'll know there's no reason to really put a lyric on it; it's a waste, and I'll throw it.

When good things come in, my agent calls or sends me the script. But I allow them to sort through the offers so that I am not just sitting and reading everything because honestly, sometimes the scripts that appeal to me are projects that are not good projects, but I just really like the script or the characters.

I do finish reading a script and say, Why are they making it and what are they talking about? I like to try and be responsible in my choices in that way.

There have been times when I've been asked to do things and I've thought, 'This is great! This is a great script. But, I do not believe myself in this role.' I pretend I'm the producer and I think, 'If I was making this movie, would I cast myself in this part,' and if that doesn't feel right to me, then I don't even go audition for it.

Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don't know what you'll like, but you recognize it when you see it.

I don't really say, 'Is this script Catholic or not?'. But if I find it to be immoral, or it doesn't sit right with me, which happens a lot these days because there's a lot of garbage being written... I'm like, 'I'm not doing this.'

Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote.

The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.

My father basically had two ways of judging anything. Either something was poetic or it wasn't.

There is always the working out of things, and you have to have sort of a gut response to it. And an intellectual response. And an aesthetic response. All that comes from having done this for a long time. Instead of saying, "That's a really good rock track, and that will do," I'm looking for something that is more original and fresh. There are a lot of elements to get into it: a level or sophistication, passion and excitement.

I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

I turned down some movies that were quite good. mainly on the basis of taste.

A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't; he or she discerns material in situations that others simply live through. Perhaps there are some who disapprove of this, but without this double consciousness, literature would not get made at all.