Dan Flavin Quotes

With photography, you've captured a moment time - it's that moment only - and in painting, you play with it; you manipulate how time is presented. It's about fantasy and illusion and the creation of desire.

The way I see it, as soon as I make a piece I’ve lost control of it.

I actually was a writer who had the ability to perform his own work as opposed to a comedian who wrote his own material. So that really made me happy and changed my whole perspective.

I wanted to work on a cable show and with a writer/director because that's a much more fulfilling and freeing experience, as an actor.

When I'm directing, I really try not to be tied to anything. I don't even have the sides in my hands. I have other things - ideas that I want to make sure I don't forget or that I want to accomplish. The endeavor isn't about propping up the screenplay; but about the communal effort of exploration from a lot of different departments - the actors, the DP, the costume designer - all these people and myself.

If you look at a character as a mountain over there that you have to climb, then I think you've lost 50 percent of the air.

Art will liberate itself from the needs and desires of men. No longer will we paint a forest ora horseas we like oras theyappear to us, but as they really are.

Bryan Cranston has got such an incredible light touch. He comes in egoless, but with bold opinions, and he wants to play. He wants to play. And that's what I've seen in great actors all my life and what I've always tried to nurture and keep in myself is that joy of playing.

I just try and do something good. But as a writer, you're slightly out of control.

Those titles, Executive Producer or actor, are unimportant. I always try to approach my role as an artist. The first thing you want to do, that you attempt to do as an artist, is to have some sort of input into the material that you are working on. That is how my process begins; I say to myself: "I want to do this kind of work or I want to do that kind of work."

Having total freedom to direct my own movies is more difficult than those I was hired for, where the framework has been already furnished. Unlike with my own work, I don't have to deny or feel embarrassed at the straightforwardness or orthodoxy of the directorial style, because I can say in excuse, "This is how I was asked to direct by those people."

If, while at the piano, you attempt to form little melodies, that is very well; but if they come into your mind of themselves, when you are not practising, you may be still more pleased; for the internal organ of music is then roused in you. The fingers must do what the head desires; not the contrary.

To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer's build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it.

I'm trying to give people the chance to put out their music without the bullshit pressures of other labels.

When you're on a lower-budget film, with one guy who maybe has a camera strapped to him, you're a much bigger part of that pie. You can be a sliver in a big Hollywood movie, but you can be a quarter of that indie movie pie. And I feel like, first of all, there is a real freedom that you feel from that, because it's like, you know what, if this is terrible, nobody's gonna ever see it, so I can be more brave.

I invest because I'm really a firm believer in letting the artist make their work, if you choose to work with an artist then you give them the go-ahead.

I think it's possible to be free in a big production. It's the eye of the director and the actor and the story.

Either the camera will dance, or I will.

The ideal set-up would be the story man, the director, and the layout man, as well as musician, operating as a sort of story unit. They all should be keenly interested in the picture. No one in person should donate to an extent where he would keep the others from entering into the production and freely expressing themselves.

I feel like, as a filmmaker, I'm at my strongest when I write the script and when it comes from me, out of whole cloth. My best work has always been self-generated.

That's a skill that I'm proud of: to be able to be a jazz musician and go a bit crazy sometimes and other times be able to pull it all in and lay it down like a track.

I do my best; I put out things I believe in and if you don't like it then pass on to something else.

I always like the studio best, once I got the hang of it and the control. I like it because it's complete control

I just tell you what a pleasure it is to get back to the kind of filmmaking I used to be allowed to do.

As a producer, I really get to tell stories that I care about in a way that I want to. I get to shape them. I get to choose the collaborators. That's really gratifying as a storyteller. And also, frankly, it's really fun to create jobs for other people.