Steve Zissis Quotes

I never thought innovation as such was very important. Not when you have to think about it... If you're going to come up with a new direction or a really new way to do something, you'll do it by just playing your stuff and letting it ride. The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.

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.

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

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.

Definition is the death of discovery.

True play is creativity.

With 'Friday Night Lights,' we were encouraged to make it our own and improvise as much as we wanted.

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.

I actually found not having a routine was inspiration.

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'm interested in finding people who I think have a voice - and a very specific voice.

You mustn't expect me to repeat myself. My past doesn't interest me. I would rather copy others than copy myself. In that way I should at least be giving them something new. I love discovering things.

I'm looking for something that gives me a chance to stretch. Because I have my own work, and I can do anything I want in my own work - juggle, tap dance, anything I want.

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.

I think people have had too much to think and ought to flex their magic muscles. It takes awhile to get oriented to what I do, but people seem to be able to hear it if they give it a chance. I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything.

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

I ad lib. I've gotta bring my own into it.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

I try not to do anything by formula.

I write what I don't know. It's way more interesting.

Anything goes. You always find interesting things that way.

I always try to keep that feeling of being on the edge. I'm afraid of knowing too well and seeming mechanical.