Joaquin Phoenix Quotes

For me, the sketchbooks are more like a secret and wholly spontaneous jeu d'esprit and some of them I like as much as anything I have ever done. They are invariably without premeditation. I mean not only that I have no plan when I make them, I also have no plan to make them.

I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.

I've never sat down and tried to write something for some occasion. You just write the tune and stay totally wide open to everything. It'll find the person or persons who are supposed to do it.

Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do - that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

I really like to experiment. That's the only way I can work. It's instinctive.

The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.

I don't have a process; I just feel it. My book on acting would be very short.

You walk on a set, and you have no idea - that's why I don't storyboard. It's all possible.

Everything Dre and I do is completely on feel. We don't prepare for anything... we only work on instinct.

When I wrote 'Grand Illusion,' I was making it up as we went along. I wrote this stuff and tried to do the best job I could.

I'm not going to be like, "I gotta get this idea out of my head." It's like, "OK, here's a clean slate, and I've got all these paints, and all these brushes, and this is what I'm going to do with it." It reveals itself, and you take a step back and say, "What's happening here? Where are we going? What does this mean? Do I need to break it open? Does it need to just be what it is? Should it end now?"

The way to art was not to think too clearly, not to plan things out, but to follow where your heart and emotions led.

Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set.

My best takes aren't necessarily take five or take six. My best takes are usually take two.

Don't think. The worst songs I've ever written happen when I think.

I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it.

If you over-think, it affects things too much; I work instinctively, like painting in a way. Think too much, and you ruin everything.

I never plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story tell itself.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

You don't know what inspires you. You like to think you know what inspires you, but in the final analysis I don't think you really do. It's great to look at a blank sheet of paper, you know, and walk up to an instrument and not know what's gonna happen. It's the most challenging thing I do.

I start each book when it's ready and never before.

Most songs I write are spur-of-the-moment-type things. I have to be spontaneous. If not, songwriting can bore me. There is no pre-design or idea of what I am going to do when I go into the studio. It's all like that for me. I could go in and write two or three songs in an eight-hour session. You can't over-think songs. You just can't.

I know Charlie Kaufman really well, for instance. Charlie Kaufman starts a story, and he has no freaking idea where he's going. None. Zero. And he doesn't want to know, because there's a little bit of death in that.

In photo shoots, I rely on instinct. Which is not to say I don't bring ideas to a project or consider it beforehand.