Creative Validation Quotes

I don't want to admit it, but I do enjoy the feedback from the audience. It's instant feedback. It's like, you could do a movie, shoot it for a year, wait six months, it comes out and you gotta do three weeks of marketing. Three weeks of that, and everyone goes, 'It sucks.'

There's still, even now, a part of me that can't believe that I got published. That part of me has never gone away.

I feel the first award any artist can have is his audience.

To sit next to Walter Hill, and to be able to exchange ideas back and forth, and for him to be able to tell you that he likes what you're doing - I don't know. I kind of pinch myself.

Who are critics? Do they know about music? Have they proved themselves in the field? I remember, when we came up with the music of 'Dil Chahta Hai,' some of the critics said that the songs sounded like jingles.

Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.

Every artist needs the appreciation he deserves.

If you're a novelist, as I am in real life, you're usually so desperate for any kind of feedback.

To finally have people receive and hear what I'm saying is one of the most gratifying feelings an artist can ever have.

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.

Writing is like shouting into the world. So when someone shouts back, it's a really big deal. To have people who read hundreds and hundreds of books a year say, 'Hey, we thought this was really great,' that's a huge self-esteem boost.

It's so amazing to hear a crowd of people singing one of your songs. It's the best feeling.

When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there are publishers that hear it, then people in my management, then my wife and my boys and my friends, and if they're all lovin' it, it's kind of withstanding all the criticism I need.

I've definitely become more commercially successful. I think everything has changed over the past two years. People seem to take me seriously now as a songwriter for other artists and as an artist, which is funny to me because I always thought I was good. I guess that's the main change, which is pretty interesting.

When I was 10, my parents really valued success in the arts, and I thought if I was a famous 'something artistic,' that they would love me more.

If 10 people see my movie and all ten really love it, then that means a lot to me, rather than ten million people go and see it and most of them hate it.

When you are proud of something you have done, and you have made a film you feel has merit, and it's found an audience and is critically well received, that's a pretty pleasurable place to be. I mean, you don't want it gathering dust at the bottom of someone's DVD collection.

It's funny because, based on the music I was making before, if you'd asked me who was the one gatekeeper or influencer whom I'd want to hear my music, I don't think Pharrell would be the first person I'd pick.

My father usually does not talk to me about my films, and it was a pleasant moment when he appreciated me the first time.

he was for long my only audience... Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.

The first time I ever heard professional actors delivering lines that I wrote was completely surreal and was just a gigantic moment in my life. It was just a little bit mind-blowing and completely strange to have something that had been on my computer being said out loud.

In 1980 I sent a play, 'Jitney,' to the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, won a Jerome Fellowship, and found myself sitting in a room with sixteen playwrights. I remember looking around and thinking that since I was sitting there, I must be a playwright, too.

I wrote for so many years in a bubble, the way everyone does, and there were large swaths of time where you think you're doing this for nothing. An audience is crucial, a back and forth with the invisible readers.

You grow up watching certain films or admiring certain filmmakers, and to write a love letter to one and have them validate it, it's extraordinary.