Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.
There are two versions to every poem – the crying version and the straight version
When you're a writer you no longer see things with the freshness of the normal person. There are always two figures that work inside you.
I've always had self-belief, though my sensitive side has never been fully appreciated. For every 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight,' I've written an 'English Rose.' People forget.
I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.
When I write a song, the music comes from my spirit, which is very playful and optimistic, but then the lyrics come from my head, which is in a different space.
I know I do swag rap also, but I also take it seriously. It's like 50-50.
All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. BOTH SIDES of the artist's personality must play their part.
I have two pairs of eyes – one to paint and one to take photographs.
Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.
For some reason writing and drawing are very separate processes for me.
I am a passionate actor, but I am also very practical.
I've been writing a lot of songs in twos, songs that are like twins in my mind.
When you're an author, you're always two people. Jasper the writer is different from Jasper the person at home.
My paintings are very strange - large and empty, like walls. Just the opposite of my writing, which is rich and juicy.
He felt himself in suspension between the two worlds, the warm, neat civilization behind his back, the cool, dark mystery outside. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
