Mark Vonnegut Quotes

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

Often times, I'm surprised by what I'm writing or what I'm playing, and then that inspires me to keep going with it, so it ends up being a very adventurous process.

The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy.

To create something new is both thrilling and excruciating at the same time. It's great to have all these choices in front of you, and to have the writers in the room so you know exactly what they meant. But the downside is you want so badly not to screw it up!

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

It's good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that's better than you'd imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn't be as much fun.

In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.

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.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.

The best ideas come out of getting lost.

I love art so much because of curiosity. At the start of a painting, I know 10 percent of what the painting will be, and then I have to improvise the whole thing.

Half of art is accident, but there is no accident without free experiment.

If a piece of genius comes, it comes, and it if doesn't, it doesn't.

Play is experimenting with chance.

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.

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

If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already – the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of.

It often feels like a tremendous amount of work is required to get an idea moving forward, like pushing a train uphill. But at a certain point, the thing takes on its own momentum, and takes unexpected turns. So it's that feeling of holding on, rather than pushing it, that is the most exciting thing. It's that need to occasionally bounce off the walls, letting anything happen for any reason, and having nothing to guide you that is the joy.

Uncertainty is the fertile ground of pure creativity and freedom.

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it.

You can't buy something which does not exist. In a way, let's make things exist and then judge later. Don't cancel the process of creativity too early; let it flow.

I consider projects very deeply, but there's always a point in your life where there's a bit of randomity.

When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration.