Creative Obsession Quotes

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

It's painful to consider anything but writing.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them...

I don't even know if Stephenie [Meyer] could tell you why she was so fixated on [Twilight] very, very contained story about these very obsessive characters. It's just an anomaly.

I have an inability to relax. I try to make every day a work day. I get pleasure from work... I try to think of sketch ideas, stand-up pieces. I am incapable of leisure and leisure time.

I have an addictive personality. I was addicted to computer games... and then all that obsessive nature just piled into music.

I'm always working on my next novel, even when I'm not.

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed.

Obsession is beautiful. It's what makes art.

I'm Kubrick without the O.C.D.

I wrote from the time I was four. It was my way of screaming and yelling, the primal scream. I wrote like a junkie, I had to have my daily fix.

The moment I wrote my first song, I got addicted.

But once an idea for a novel seizes a writer...well, it’s like an inner fire that at first warms you and makes you feel good but then begins to eat you alive, burn you up from within. You can’t just walk away from the fire; it keeps burning. The only way to put it out is to write the book.

Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.

I always have the same thing - which is the fear of not getting a laugh - that I've had from the time I was a kid; obsessing over, 'This joke doesn't quite work, we've got to get this right.' I was always like that, whether I was a member of a six-person ensemble or whether I'm the center of a show.

When I picked up the guitar for the first time, it opened up a whole new world for me. I became obsessed with writing and playing.

The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.

When I'm talking about a product, before it was a product, it was in my brain. So if I have an inspiration, I will literally get up in the middle of the night, and I'll dream about my customer... I don't feel like it's selling. I feel like it's talking about my children.

I think you get so wrapped up in the book you're currently writing, it's hard to think about anything else. But I know as soon as I'm done with this book, I'll move on to something else.

When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it.

Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.

I stay in the studio. I'm a studio junkie.

I think that-that anyone, the painter, the musician, the writer works in a-a kind of an-an insane fury. He's demon-driven. He can get up feeling rotten, with a hangover, or with-with actual pain, and-and if he gets to work, the first thing he knows, he don't remember that pain, that hangover-he's too busy.

It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?

Songwriting is like ... being possessed. You try to go to sleep but the song won't let you.