Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever.
Interpretation
Encouragement can have profound positive effects on an artist's work and creativity.
This quote highlights the importance of encouragement in the creative process. Kevin Smith emphasizes that motivating and supporting artists can lead to extraordinary results, such as beloved films and music, while discouragement yields no benefits at all. The message underscores the value of positive reinforcement in fostering talent and creativity.
In practice
In a writing workshop, this quote could inspire participants to uplift each other's work.
The essence of my lyrics is the desire for peace and harmony. That's all anyone has ever wanted. How could it become outdated?...We are trying to communicate a fulfilled ideal...I am a reflection of what I sing. Sometimes I have to get serious because the things I've been through are serious...The way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music.
If I don't have a script I adore, I do one I like. If I don't have one I like, I do one that has an actor I like or that presents some technical challenge.
I strive for an architecture from which nothing can be taken away.
In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense
I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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