Top 84 Quotes & Sayings by Johnny Flynn - Page 2

As a jobbing actor or musician, you have to take any work you can get.

I had to learn how to work in a studio at first because it's a totally different creative environment to the 'bedroom recordings' I'd done before, where I could translate my own ideas without having to explain them to anyone.

My dad was an actor, and he always said that work was work; you can't turn your nose up at it. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, and he had this real work ethic, which I inherited.

I've never done anything like 'Brotherhood' before. It was a great challenge to take up a part in a live audience sitcom - it was amazing.

I definitely asked too many questions of my teachers and was probably a bit facetious at times.

Weirdly, my dad didn't want me to become an actor, he was always quite resistant to it. He told me as much many times. That just made it more attractive to me.

I'm often the one in my gang of friends who's worried about how we're going to get from A to B. I'm the one running around saying, 'Is somebody going to do something about it?' Everyone else is bit more chilled.

My dad was an actor, and he made it all seem quite magical. It felt like a slightly subversive thing, telling stories, when all of my other friends' parents were builders or bank clerks. It's always seemed quite magical to me.

When I was young, I was being pushed, against my will, towards becoming a classical musician. I had music scholarships; I had to play the violin and do orchestra practice and that sort of stuff. That meant I didn't get to do any school plays. I desperately wanted to do that.

I think everyone in their 30s looks back at their 20s and thinks, 'Oh God, if I'd just done this and this, and not done that.'

I think the truest things come from silence, but everything's always so clogged up with noise. If everything falls away, and you can truly listen to someone, giving them yourself and generosity, you can truly lose yourself in what they're saying. Like, not impose your ideas on what they're saying, but really tune into them.

I really love a lot of early Sixties R&B, rock n' roll, and I love performing songs that have that power and soulfulness.

My only incentive is to write music that changes me, where the process of making it is a discovery and is true in some way, at that moment.

I take them both seriously - I don't particularly want to be an 'actor-musician.' I want to play the great challenging parts, to be right for the part, rather than just, 'Oh, he can play the fiddle.'

I'm not a fan of taking too long in the studio. I always do one vocal take and jump out of the control room, and people push me back in... It's a real turn-off to hear things that are too polished. I feel like I've almost fought for the right to be that kind of musician - we used to be on a major label, and now we're on an indie.

I can't remember a 'best gig,' and my brain doesn't work in absolute terms like that.

I don't really write songs. They're just there anyway, chiseling away at the atmosphere, and suddenly they're like, 'Oh, thanks for coming. Thanks for finding me. We'll share each other now.'

A lot of the work I've done has involved playing quite sympathetic characters.

I always love going to New York.

You might as well acknowledge what came before, because you can never do something wholly new. It's not unoriginal to make your references clear.

My thing about demos is that you usually prefer them to the finished thing.

I feel really lucky that I somehow have blagged my way into loads of different experiences. I find making a film fascinating, I find making a play amazing, and working with my band and scoring things... it's all really cool. I'm just a glutton for experience, really.

In my early twenties, the whole experience of going on tour was like losing myself in this slightly wild environment.

It's great to be able to write songs and draw on life, to write truthfully, and to be able to do that, it's good to be exploring other stuff as well.