Stephen Karam Quotes

It's impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.

The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand participation in their vision.

I practice the artist's golden rule. I wouldn't want somebody telling me how to finish my painting, I'm not going to tell him how to finish his movie or how to shape his movie.

My dream as a producer is to be able to build a company that can be a safe haven for artists, for directors and for writers and actors to do what they do best and let them have final edit. I'd like to build something to that effect.

You don't always just have to do an indie movie to feel like you're controlling it with a few people that you really have connected with, creatively. You can do it on a bigger scale.

I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.

I don't control anything I create.

I wanted to express myself more fully through writing and directing. It just feels like a package deal. Anytime you create anything, you try to exert mastery over your world.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.

Producing should be a creative responsibility.

You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.

I never want to be in a position where I have to defend my material. It's too subjective. It's for other people to defend or not defend.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art.

I think, like any artist or any writer, I just want to have that pure freedom of expression and of thought - the freedom to explore and move in unexpected ways.

I think, generally, the creative process is hurt if you're thinking about the end as opposed to focusing on day-to-day decisions.

I love having the control over the end result and not having to go through some committee to get something approved. I feel sorry for people, like actors, because unless you're Woody Allen or Mel Gibson, they don't have much say in the decisions that affect their work.

I'd love more production houses to encourage artists to create what they want and not just churn things out.

I can only go with my gut and say what I would like to do, and then my producer comes in and makes it happen.

No one is mediating aesthetic choices on an OPN album other than myself.

I always say I want creative control. A lot of people don't think about that. And that's what every artist should think of - being creative and not just a puppet.

A producer has to want you. And if the producer trusts you and asks for your vision, it frees you up so much, not having to explain or fight for every decision. You're allowed to create.