Sebastian Lelio Quotes

Certain things you have to stumble on to. They can't be preprogrammed.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

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

Genius is a grace. The true man of genius acts by movement or by impulsion.

I never map things out in advance. It would be better if I did and more economical in terms of time, but I've found that if you work out a plot line from beginning to end, at the beginning it becomes very rational.

You walk on a set, and you have no idea - that's why I don't storyboard. It's all possible.

We like the idea that the things we do seem to come out of nowhere.

I'm always open to new stuff. I don't sit and try to figure out what to do, I just wait for an idea to come.

The nature of what we're doing is something, which is by its very nature, is non-formulaic. There's no way that you can make it happen by intention alone. It's something that you have to sort of allow it to happen, and you have to allow for it to happen.

Many of the things that have happened in the laboratory have happened in ways it would have been impossible to foresee, but not impossible to plan for in a sense. I do not think Dr. Whitney deliberately plans his serendipity but he is built that way; he has the art-an instinctive way of preparing himself by his curiosity and by his interest in people and in all kinds of things and in nature, so that the things he learns react on one another and thereby accomplish things that would be impossible to foresee and plan.

One of the main reasons that I love doing what I do is because it's unpredictable and I don't know what's coming next. When you're creating work, it's up to you whether it's an exciting experience or not.

I cant duplicate my own successes, because part of the creation of that effect is making something happen that you didn't expect

For me, you have to not have a formula. You have to not even sit down and say, 'I want to write right now.' It has to just kind of come out. It's not something you can plan.

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

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

What a fine line there is between artistry and insanity. There's no formula for it, and I think a lot of people when they're around you - even those closest to you - when you're in that whirl of creativity and you're grabbing those things out of the air, there's no rational process.

I don't consciously go out looking for themes. They attach themselves to me.

Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.

To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.

In my work, I have never had any use for anything that I have known in advance.

You must plan to be spontaneous.

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

If I'm in the middle of a take and I start to think about what I'm doing, I just mess up and I have to stop and so I find that for me, you really need to trust your instinct.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.