Robert Musil Quotes

The idea of directing a film is a strange one for me. I feel anti-mathematical, in a way, in that sense. I don't like when things make sense. I prefer if they don't.

I want to be an artist you cannot categorize at all. You can't put a box around me. You can't put anything around me.

People who don't like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that's how life is.

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

Art is not predictable. Art is not golf, as great as that may be. There are 360 degrees of choice to make.

I actually found not having a routine was inspiration.

My way of living and working is that I'll do my thing. I went from one thing to another. That annoyed people. They didn't know how to categorize me.

I just go where it feels the most honest to go; then I deal with people thinking it's weird afterwards.

... if a person is to be unconventional, he must be amusing or he is intolerable: for, in the nature of the case, he guarantees you nothing but amusement. He does not guarantee you any of the little amenities by which society has assured itself that, if it must go to sleep, it will at least sleep in a comfortable chair.

Within the universe of the extraordinary, those qualities we designate to human concepts of gender are often shared, exchanged, or even completely obliterated. Because of this mixture of traits, these twins called Genius and Madness often appear to be the same thing. They both have a tendency to blur the lines of what we call norms, or established reality. They both, when we study that grand tapestry known as history and modern-day society, tend to stand out in much bolder relief than other figures. -- from Dancing with Madness, Dancing with Genius

I am now and have always been a stranger to the realm of practical matters.

I don't belong to any school or clique or ghetto. I don't have any preconceived ideas. I'm trying to serve a story and not a genre or a style.

It is not logical for art to be logical. Art goes against the grain of the times as readily as it goes with it and at the very same moment. Instead of seeking the nearest exit, art responds to a new situation by uncovering a labyrinth of problems.

Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?

I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.

I've never made the separation between, say, the museum and the hardware store. I mean, I enjoy both of them, and I want to combine the two.

If there's the right condition, I always want to express the concept or ideas in a very independent way.

I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.

Schools often box kids into predefined categories. But we don't know what amazing ideas, inventions, cures, and contributions all these youths really have.

There are those to whom one must advise madness.

That is not what Geek means to me. We are more than the hobbies that we do or the things that we like. To me, Geek means an outsider, a rebel, a dreamer, a creator, a fighter. It's a person who dares to love something that isn't conventional.

When circumstances defy order, order should bend or break: anomalies and uncertainties give validity to architecture.

The world has certain rules - Hollywood has certain rules - but it doesn't mean you have to play by them, and I don't, or I'd be a miserable person.

Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want. The idea of the rigid style seemed to me then something you needn't concern yourself with, it would trap you.

I don't start with an idea or concept in the sense that I flesh out an idea or concept and set it at the center of something.