Wayne Shorter Quotes

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.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

You never know how things are going to turn out in a movie. You can imagine a scene one way, and it can turn out to be completely the polar opposite of what you expected. You just have to roll with the punches.

Improvising things is always changing. A lot of momentum.

Life isn't a science. We make it up as we go.

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.

My life and career have been a big improvisation.

If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed

Many times you never know what's going to happen. You'll play songs that you never thought you were going to play.

When you do something that people respond to, and then you start altering the blueprint for what worked, it's pretty fear-inducing. But sometimes, you have to do that, in order to push the boundaries.

The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are...so make up your own rules.

Sometimes you know the story. Sometimes you make it up as you go along and have no idea how it will come out.

The only permanent rule in Calvinball is that you can never play it the same way twice! (Calvin)

Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. . . Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.

So what starts is ad hoc and you never know where it's going to lead, so it's important to keep an open mind about those things.

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change.

When I do a take, I very often try things that I haven't planned to try to see if I can pull it off.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.

I'm not somebody who plans. There were times I planned a lot in my life, and it never turns out how you plan it. So I think it's important not to. I'm a very spontaneous person.

It's so important to adapt, think outside the box, and stay ahead if you want to grow.

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

You must plan to be spontaneous.