Itzhak Perlman Quotes

Every now and then I'll think of something to put back in the show. I just kind of play it off the top of my head. If I do it that way it keeps it kinda fresh.

I'm not able to go in with an act that I use month to month year to year all the time. It's constantly evolving and changing and that keeps me on my toes but certainly adds to the challenge.

We always have a take that's 'one for fun', so once you've got what you need, you can do what you like. Something does occasionally pop out of that tree. I'm always open to ideas.

Producing a series is like being Lewis and Clark: You know where you're going, you just don't know how you're going to get there. When people say, 'You should create a bible for your show,' I say, 'You don't want a bible. It'll prevent you from making discoveries along the way.' And that's what happened on 'The X-Files.'

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.

I like to reinvent with each project, in any which way possible.

Being open to the unexpected allows me to bring so much to my craft.

Every time, my syncopation is different, because I can never play the same fill twice. I just can't, never have been able to. Even as a Beatle, they'd say, 'Oh, double-track that.' I don't know how you do that, because when I'm in a fill I'm sort of this blackout, just this pure me coming out and I can't pure me the same, twice. So, that's that.

Remembering that life can be full of surprises is useful in any part of your life. You can try a new way of singing a song you’ve performed for years, a new way of showing your family your love for them, or a new recipe. Don’t just play the licks you know. We’re all improvising all the time — it’s good to recognize that and embrace it.

I like to leave a little room to innovate and change things around while I'm working.

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

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.

When you work with an actor and then you discover new things that are better, I think you gotta be free to be able to go with the new things that you're finding. I think that's very important. I have a strong idea when I go to shoot a movie but I also love to discover things when I'm on set as well.

It's impossible for me to feel like there's only one way to do a thing. There's nothing wrong with having one way of doing it, but I think it's a bad habit. I believe in range. Like, there's a lot of tunes that I play all the time-sometimes I hear 'em in a different register. And if you don't have complete freedom, or you won't let yourself get away from that one straight line, oh, my goodness, that's too horrible to even think about.

All day long, I'm creative, and the second I get a little tired of any given medium, I just shut that area down and go to the next room. I just go do something else.

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.

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

I'm not a creature of habit. I like to find things from unexpected sources.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

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

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.