James Cameron Quotes

We have to take risks with art. If we don't, it all becomes a bit boring.

The reason I shift gears constantly, why I'm doing an opera, why I've done essays, why I've written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays... is so I will have new ways of failing. This means becoming a student again.

We live in a world where art is always looked upon as the perfect medium. We live in a society where we can alter our body parts, we can act in the most perfect or right way. A lot of that is dangerous because, especially in the world of art, the chief enemy of creativity is being safe. If you're safe, you can't fall and hurt yourself. The older you are, the further down the crash is going to be. But if it works out, the higher the high.

I think nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness - the point where you can’t go any further.

It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.

I feel like every time I take on a movie, it's important that the possibility of failure exists, and of the unknown, because it's a challenge to do something I haven't done before and something I have to try to work out.

I'm not an artist, and I want to take risks, and when the possibility of failure occurs, it's because the idea is all exciting or interesting as a high wire act, and sometimes you've got to fall off, just by virtue of the fact that you're constantly trying to evolve and do new things.

Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail

I feel every day that everything I create - everything I do - I want it to be a risk. I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

I'm willing to fail, my producers are willing to fail, my crew is willing to fail.

I love to experiment, to push myself, and I want people to accept me in roles that I have never attempted before.

I think comics do need permission to fail. I think comics do need permission to go up and try stuff.

Embrace error: Create an atmosphere in which prudent risk taking is strongly encouraged.

No art ever came out of not risking your neck.

To be an inventor, you have to be willing to live with a sense of uncertainty, to work in this darkness and grope towards an answer, to put up with anxiety about whether there is an answer.

You do stuff that gets a reaction and you think 'that's a winner' and then it never sees the light of day. But the thing with improvisation is that 90% of what you come up with won't be used and for good reason. But you keep going for the occasional gem that you might come up with. You do a scene and a lot of the time. We wouldn't cut. So, you come up with something that might be funny and then you go, 'alright, what else'? So, you kind of throw stuff against the wall and see what happens. But you've got to be prepared to make a fool of yourself.

We're just one cog in this giant machine. You show up and look at all the other cogs like, "Wow, everyone is the best at what they do." You're in really good hands. And that frees you up to play and feel safe, and you can take chances, creatively. You can take risks. I want to show up to work and take risks. I don't ever want to play it safe.

We all have to open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to try and arrive at something new and different.

Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

But there's no substitute for getting smarter faster. And the way you get smarter is to screw around vigorously. Try stuff. See what works. See what fails miserably. Learn. Rinse. Repeat.

Great photography is always on the edge of failure.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

Art like life, should be free, since both are experimental.