Art Interviews

“It’s the rollercoaster ride of doing something creative: when it goes well and you enjoy the process then it’s a high and you just want to keep on doing it.”

“I hope the scale of my works is way bigger than what you see. I hope they live in you.”

“The bottom line in the end is to grab the heart of the audience and talk to them directly and tell them: "I share with you my soul and my heart."”

“There is something in leaving this place better than where you have left it, working on yourself, doing things with other people, there is something in that that feels right, deep in your core. I go with that.”

“If it sounds right, then I’m happy, no matter how I got there. I just want to make beautiful music.”

“It’s still astounding to me that I have one Oscar, let alone two. Especially because it’s by-product of something that you love so much, it feels like that’s already the gift, that’s already the award.”

“The guys who are real artists are people who have figured out the art of living; their art is art because they live. They have made living an art, they have made an art of living. They are constantly inputting life as opposed to expressing life.”

“You can catch ideas at a deeper level when you start meditating. Intuition grows, and intuition is the number one tool for an artist – feeling and thinking combined. The ideas are flowing, and the feeling that you can get it to feel correct. You know what that is. It’s a knowingness that grows. It’s really beautiful.”

“I think it’s really important to not be afraid of failure and to push yourself to try things and jump in the cold water.”

“Art is about finding creativity in the normal gutter next to you. To see the potential in something where there is no potential in terms of how society sees it is often where art or creativity is a great tool. It’s about making the impossible possible.”

“If I pass away one day, I am happy because I tried to do my best. My sport allowed me to do so much.”

“I think that one should make a house that really fits you like your second soul. It should be your most preferred place on earth!”

“I live from my heart. I am not a cerebral person. I will never be. I am 55 years old. I will continue doing things the way I have done them my whole life.”

“I thought for a long time as the business grew, “Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life?” And I knew it was not. When I left Calvin Klein, I had done almost everything I wanted to do in terms of creation of products. And re-doing was less fun.”

“My goal when I’m in front of an audience is to perform the piece and fill it with meaning. On stage, I concentrate on rationality and empathy, since the singer must feel a certain amount of emotion, but not too much.”

“I am Valentino. I live in my own world. I love to create clothes, I love beautiful things. If they want to call me an icon, okay, then I am an icon.”

“Although sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don’t want to just retire. No, I enjoy it all and you just keep going until the day comes when you can’t do it anymore.”

“My work is integrated completely into my life and vice-versa – I’ve been working since I was 16. My work is my life and my life is my work. It made me who I am.”

“I have a responsibility that lasts a lifetime with my children. They know that I love my work, and they know how I go about it. And I hope that they find work that they love, because nothing can compare to watching your child succeed.”

“I am very grateful for the films I’ve made. I’ve been able to make movies for $1 million and I’ve been able to make movies for $195 million. I can do what I want in different sizes for different reasons. I have been able to do 10 more movies than I thought I would ever make!”

“I think at a certain point, you arrive to a kind of maturity that allows you to swim more freely. And when you touch that state, playing with your unconscious, it's very beautiful when you when you experience that moment.”

“I think the best you can do for yourself is let your subconscious drive you, instead of doing things because you want to achieve some sort of glory.”

“To fight this game alone is actually every day a struggle. Sometimes you are not in the best shape. The biggest thing is that you must find in it a personal happiness.”

“Every time you hear a piece of music that you’ve written, you remember the joy of it. Even if you don’t remember exactly what the writing process was like, there’s a moment where you hear it and your heart is full. It’s a similar emotion like when you are in love with someone, you feel that internal joy.”

“I think all the roles of my career have presented me with opportunities for my own personal growth. Roles that really push you out of your comfort zone, it really helps you to grow, and it then brings you greater capacity for love within yourself and love for others.”

“I think I will stop working when I am finally satisfied… And I cannot see that in the foreseeable future. The urge to do better and even better than that is what pushes me forward.”

“when we finally put a piece together for the first time, seeing it all together, when it actually works… The excitement in the room is something I’ll never forget. It feels like a very powerful moment to be part of.”

“For me, success is having integrity and really staying true to my own voice. When I was younger, maybe it was more about the big spaces and getting awards. But now I’m prioritizing more this idea of having a beautiful process.”

“We have such a short time on this earth, and when you give that opportunity to somebody younger, and they pass it on to the next generation… That’s real success.”

“I think a big part of writing comes out of an attempt to understand yourself. I just always felt whole when I was writing. I felt this kind of beautiful privacy that I never felt in any other way.”

“I feel quite free as an artist. I don't feel that I have to prove anything. It’s a liberating feeling. I can go in any directions, I can explore and embrace whatever I want.”

“I want to be an authentic person. I start to feel that it’s a mission. I am not going to hold back on an opinion I have about something; I don’t know what the point of that would be.”

“I am not that interested at the moment to work for the sake of others, I’m not interested in doing commissions. I'm way more interested in creating art for art's sake and in order to do that I have to believe in myself.”

“When you are in a very, very tough moment of a day and have a lot of frustration because nothing is happening right—but you don’t give up—and suddenly that happens! That’s almost a transcendental thing.”

“I dreamed of winning the Olympics since I was nine years old. That was definitely the most memorable race of my career. But the next day I woke up, and I wanted to win the next race.”

“One day, if you have a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work, you’re going to find out who you are.”

“As a director, what I hope is to create situations where the actors will be able to be alive like real people even in the context of something that is quite manufactured.”

“I take everything as seriously as the next thing. I don't differentiate or have a level of commitment based on the kind of project that it is. I believe that there's an equal measure in one role versus another role.”

“Once I commit to an idea, then I just move forward with it, no matter what. And that's always how I've operated when it comes to my art. I'm kind of tenacious in that way, even if it takes a lifetime, eventually I will make that thing.”

“I don’t pander to anybody. I don’t care who it is. I just do the picture I do.”