Milton Avery Quotes

If I knew what the photograph was going to look like, I wouldn't bother taking it. It's the voyage of discovery that fascinates me.

Predictability is boring! I want a book to take me someplace I haven't been before, show me sights I haven't seen, make me ponder questions I may not have pondered before.

Any creative process is about being in a territory which isn't secure, isn't necessarily familiar, and isn't convenient in any sort of way. And that's the excitement of it.

I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

My films are so new and unique that I don't know where I will end up. Fear keeps me alert. And it's also a part of an excitement.

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.

Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.

Fiction, maybe art in general, is a tentative, uncertain enterprise; it's not science, it's an exploration, but you never find much in the way of answers.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

The audience likes to be taken on new journeys.

And as I reinvent myself and I'm constantly curious about everything, I can't wait to see what's around the corner in newfound art and entertainment and exploration.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

I like to surprise myself. I've always been attracted to projects where I don't know how they're going to turn out.

Fear of the unknown is a great creative partner.

I like the unknown. That's what Terry Malick has always really liked. He's always looking for the unexpected.

As an artist, I want to explore as much as I can.

Curiosity is a great weapon for the artist.

I understand, as an artist as well as a producer, the need for there to be mystery and surprise.

On the ridge where the great artist moves forward, every step is an adventure, an extreme risk. In that risk, however, and only there, lays the freedom of Art.

Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.

All art is a kind of exploring. To discover and reveal is the way every artist sets about his business.

Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing.

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.