Creativity Quotes

Holding back is so close to stealing.

I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves.

For whatever you're doing, for your creative juices, your geography's got a hell of a lot to do with it. You really have to be in a good place, and then you have to be either on your way there or on your way from there.

The Seed Sounds Weekender is a vital reminder that music doesn't start in boardrooms or big arenas; it starts in back rooms, pubs, basements, and independent spaces run on love, grit, and belief in something bigger.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

I don't want to keep playing the same formula over and over again, otherwise you just go insane. I don't want to become stale. I want to be creative.

Groups break up because they never got across what they wanted to do personally, and they have creative differences, and egos start to clash.

For me, theory has always opened things up to where I can walk into a room and just by hearing something I know exactly where to go on the guitar. I have a better time playing because I have a variety of colors to bring to the table.

I consider my music to be Progressive Synth Pop, which says nothing about what it sounds like, but does describe my basic approach.

I combine aspects of many styles of music and create my own musical forms by way of electronic instruments.

When you're at odds with yourself, it's hard to create. Sometimes the writing process is as easy as opening up the window and letting in the breeze. And sometimes it's like chiseling away at a block of granite with a pencil.

I would rather be stricken blind than to live without expression of mind.

I guess the ultimate luxury professionally is to be able to change your direction, to work in another medium.

My thing is about following the accidental, more than trying to paint an accurate bowl of apples. I enjoy most following the paint. It leads me somewhere else. I think I enjoy just letting the magic unfold and letting the spirit of the paint tell me where we're going.

I started to write the song. And I was in Gladewater, Texas, one night with Carl Perkins and I said, I've got a good idea for a song. And I sang him the first verse that I had written, and I said it's called "Because You're Mine." And he said, "I Walk The Line" is a better title, so I changed it to "I Walk The Line."

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.

To create something from nothing is one of the greatest feelings, and I would-I don't know, I wish it upon everybody. It's heaven.

It's not to anybody's best interest to think about how they will be perceived tomorrow. It hurts you in the long run