If I had to compare myself to another artist, I wouldn't. I feel like my lyrics are really strong. I'm good at painting pictures and telling picture stories.
I write my own stories. I like telling stories to little children. I think the good thing about stories is they carry you to another place which you've never been. And you feel like you're just enveloped by the book and the characters.
I felt like my Ellenberger fight, I think I fought a really good fight. I was technically on-point, I was sharp, and watching the fight I wasn't disappointed. But I didn't have fun at the end of the day, and that's what I do this for. I want to express myself when I'm up there, like an artist painting a picture.
I never know if my picture is a good picture or a bad picture, because I'm not making pictures thinking of the public, I'm making pictures to realize myself.
I wouldn't compare myself to any past Idol contestant, because I don't feel like I am like any of them. Maybe stories are cool but my story is different from most people's story. I don't like to compare myself to other people, I like to just be me.
When I was painting, I was painting stories I was telling myself. When I look back at it, moving to writing was a very natural progression for me.
Why was the painting made? What ideas of the artist can we sense? Can the personality and sensitivity of the artist be felt when studying the work? What is the artist telling us about his or her feelings about the subject? What response do I get from the message of the artist? Do I know the artist better because of the painting?
So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.
Comedy is the one absolutely self-aware art form. Actually, hip-hop's another one, I suppose. Because in your songs you're talking about how good a hip-hop artist you are. It's like a painter painting a panting of himself painting a painting.
The imagery is very much released from reality. It's not nailed down to specifics of the words. They're painting a picture, not telling linear stories.
When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.
Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself.
You can't paint pictures of love. You can only imagine them. So I suppose I don't need a painting by another artist. I have enough of my own.
I had a story-telling mother; she's written novels and short stories. So I feel like maybe I'm staying alive by telling tales.
I don't want to compare myself to Picasso, but he had four or five periods in his life. Any good artist grows and changes and matures.
As a rule I do not like to explain my photographs, I want my pictures to be read and explored. I believe a good picture is open to many individual (subjective) associations. I am usually pleased when a viewer finds interpretations that I myself had not been aware of.
I love how 'Game of Thrones' has resonated with so many people around the world. I feel like it has really tapped into our need to hear stories about the human condition, love, death, good, evil... For me, it really is a modern version of the old Greek theatre or cave men sitting around fires telling stories.