Tom Hanks Quotes

You have to keep surprising your audience.

What's challenging is to surprise the audience.

The element of surprise is the most important thing and what keeps me interested in writing. I can feel it if I've written that predictable or boring line, and I will carry that around with me all day.

We try to keep audiences coming back in greater numbers by doing the unexpected and not simply following a pattern or a mold or a formula.

If you give the audience what they expect, they'll be bored. There are no rules: You do what you want while respecting the boundaries. You don't poke people in the eye; you do things they haven't seen before and make it accessible, funny and clever.

That's the tricky thing these days: being able to surprise people.

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.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The thing I have always tried to do is surprise people: to present them with something they didn't expect.

People get surprised by my choices. But that comes from me looking for something new.

What really excites me in a project is when it goes in a way you haven't been before.

I'm always very excited by something that's a curveball or from left field.

Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.

I'm always excited by the unlikely, never by ordinary things.

Surprise is key in all art.

If innovations were predictable, they wouldn't be discoveries.

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

I always try to incorporate something in every book that I've never used before. Hopefully, spontaneity will keep readers reading.

I always kept the fans happy. They always saw a different Rey, whether it was a mask, a design, a color. I never gave them the same thing twice and always kept them on their feet. They were always excited to see what Rey was going to bring to the table.

I love doing things people don't expect. The fans will be well fed.

Chance is the only source of true novelty.

I'm always trying to create something that the fans won't expect.

I want each season to feel new and special. I don't want it to feel, "Oh, more of this." That's something that's easy to do in the first three seasons, and harder to do as you go. I'd rather err on the side of blowing up everything and being like, "Why did you do that? There was more story to tell there," and moving the family to Mexico like on Weeds, instead of people going, "Oh, we've seen this already. We're tired of this."

Good theater is not what is expected, but what surprises.

I want people to be blown away when I do what they don't expect.