Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.
I'm still shocked when people say, 'You haven't done a studio record in 20 years.' I try to make excuses for it, but the truth is I just wasn't with it.
My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer's block, as if it was some kind of illness.
I figure that that has a ten year cycle. At the end of that ten years, I began to get worried that I would run into what is known as the writer's block, the feeling of not being able to do these things.
Bob Dylan wrote in his elliptical memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, he was washed up in the 1980s, no longer a commercial success, and no longer putting out good work.
Hollywood has turned into an emotional Detroit.
Inevitably any series that goes on too long will reach a point where it starts struggling for ideas, so I've always been really aware of getting out while the going's good.
The truth is I made a few good movies in the '50s, then went into freefall.
I had writer's block for almost a year.
I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.
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.
It's not like I've got 100 ideas. I finish a book, and I've got none.
Some days I can't get an idea, and I think, 'Man, I'm just washed up,' but it's just a mood.
Sometimes I draw blanks.
I think, sometimes, you can just get really burnt out on something you enjoy doing and feel like the sponge is completely wrung dry.
You can only be independently creative for so long until your brain burns out.
I've experienced writer's block, but never for more than a few days.
I absolutely refuse to accept the fact that any country in the world goes into a kind of film-making crisis. What happens is they lose confidence, they lose focus and the young film-makers of any particular generation can very easily get lost in that mix. It's happened in Italy, happened in France, happened in the U.K. during my lifetime.
I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.
Most designers work up to a peak. They do some great stuff, and then it's just junk.
For the next three plus years, I really was not in creative shape. That part of my brain was not functioning.
I'm trying not to go through that midlife dip that artists tend to have.
The idea of writer's block or not having inspiration is totally terrifying to me.
This motion-picture muddle had distracted me from my writing.
It's weird, because I don't feel prolific. I don't write anything for months at a time.
