I wouldn't recommend being a musician to anyone. It's not glamorous. It's a lot of being dirty, not eating, playing for five people and one of them is the bartender.
Arts and crafts, or getting to be in a play with people, or making a little short film, that's pure sugar, because the stakes are so low.
I often use hypothetical situations to generate information and imagery for paintings and to create a fictional space where a subject can be put into play.
To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.
I think, in a lot of ways, it's easier to play a smaller room. You can exploit the quieter dynamics you would shy away from in larger venues.
I'm three-quarters Russian, so I've always felt an outsider. But I don't think you can be in a play with John Of Gaunt's 'This sceptred isle' speech and not feel proud to be British.
I still play jazz, and I've always got that trumpet very handy, but I'm coming to feel the classical venues are where my main focus is, in the realm of symphonic pops.
I never went to school for directing. I studied theater with a director. I followed plays to see how a director would talk to the actors. I tried to make my own school.
I guess a lot of people don't realise, but I'm always playing a character when I'm working. When you're always having people's images projected on you, who 'Daria' is as a person sort of disappears.
I think what's most fun is playing someone who's sort of selfish and in a lot of ways unlikeable, but there's this really big heart underneath it that you get little glimpses of.
If you're playing a cop in a modern film, you don't have to walk with your spine straight up and bow before a fight. There's a lot of free form of expressing yourself as an actor.
Tim Robbins had real confidence in college. He literally stole actors from the theater department at UCLA to be in his plays. The department heads got so mad at him.
I always wanted to play Joan of Arc. I've always wanted to do that. Now I'm thinking, 'Maybe there's a story in Joan of Arc's mother!' If I don't hurry up, her grandmother!
I have written, probably, more books for children than any other writer, from story-books to plays, and can claim to know more about interesting children than most.
I've got a nice little crafty deal with the people in Barbados; 10 days out there teaching the locals how to play darts for an hour a day. Get paid for that as well.
I started performing at two or three on a tape recorder, one of those little flat recorders where you just push play and record.
Yes, I get a report from BMI about the frequency of performances, and it is very surprising. They played one of my most advanced pieces, and one of my most unusual ones on the radio.
The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.
My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice.
A lot of the characters I end up playing have a certain degree of glamour or sexiness, but I like it when you can have some other element that makes it much more interesting.
You have played, (I think) And broke the toys you were fondest of, And are a little tired now; Tired of things that break, and— Just tired. So am I.
