Robert Altman Quotes

Above all, it's never blind chance: it's a chance that is always planned, but also always surprising. And I need it in order to carry on, in order to eradicate my mistakes, to destroy what I've worked out wrong, to introduce something different and disruptive. I'm often astonished to find how much better chance is than I am.

Error itself may be happy chance.

Coincidence is important, the convergence of different ideas.

As I get on and films take four years to complete, I tend to have a hankering for very short projects so you can move on to the next idea. It's the ideas I'm interested in. What comes out of your head.

One never can plan. I just did my work and enjoyed shooting for all my films.

Do as many ideas as possible. The right idea will pick you.

Luck happens when opportunity encounters the prepared mind.

The way I photograph... in many ways it's directed by chance and all my mistakes, which are often the best stuff. I found that no matter if it's the same tape, the same TV, and the same camera, I can never duplicate an image... your arm jiggles, there's just too much chance. And I never put it on pause, or use any of that fancy equipment.

Sometimes actors' mistakes give me ideas I can use, because mistakes are always sincere, absolutely sincere.

In creative endeavors luck is a skill.

As a director, you try to find what is creative.

As artists, we are so not in control most of the time of the content or the narrative of our characters, and sometimes writing takes a turn and it's not something we necessarily have control over. It's just a lot of random dumb luck, so when things click, you've just got to enjoy it.

I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.

There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.

Innovation is serendipity, so you don't know what people will make.

I have a theory that the only original things we ever do are mistakes.

Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything.

Fact is, inventing an innovative business model is often mostly a matter of serendipity.

A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide.

Trying to force creativity is never good.

How often things occur by mere chance which we dared not even hope for.

I've hardly had an avant-garde career... If you're going to make a film, you have to try to make sure it comes out of a childlike passion, as if you're doing it for the first time.

If you have the ideas, and you're a creative person, then you don't really differentiate in how your ideas manifest themselves.

Happy accidents are real gifts, and they can open the door to a future that didn't even exist. It's kind of nice sometimes to set up something to encourage or allow happy accidents to happen.

There are just moments when all the stars are aligned for breakthrough products.