Chuck Close Quotes

I mean, the things you think will never happen, you have to confront; those things that come into your life that you thought you never could deal with, you do.

I quickly realized I had to have my own style and strategy and find my own way.

I'm my own boss, my own editor, my own shooter, my own writer, everything. This is all stuff I learned through trial and error... failing at a lot of things has taught me how to succeed at them eventually... you roll with the punches.

But I love the idea - whether it's in my work or where I live - exploring new frontier, and I like putting myself in strange places and trying to survive and figure things out and gather up an infrastructure. I like knowing that I could figure out a way to live anywhere.

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

Doing it your own way, not having to go exactly by the book to be successful.

My methodology is not knowing what I'm doing and making that work for me.

If you always have a crutch, you don't learn anything.

A mistake is simply another way of doing things.

Most of the time I believe in letting kids go ahead and make their own mistakes - maybe even get a little hurt - and learn from them.

Sometimes when you're given hurdles, it makes you more creative in the end.

Working on my own gave me a chance to take my time and experiment a lot.

I was lucky I went to school in London because the tutors could see what to do. I knew I wanted to do something different. Why would I want to do what other people were already doing, because they would always do it better? I always wanted to work around the body. So throughout my college years, my work was quite free.

A lot of the problems teenagers go through, it's better for them to go through them on their own. If you always have a crutch, you don't learn anything.

Mr President: When it rains it pours but most Americans hold their own umbrellas.

If you have no road map, you have to create your own.

You can't have a hit every time. The main thing is to keep on working and not be afraid to take risks. It's better to do something that's not perfect and successful every time. It's important to be fearless and move forward, to learn from what went wrong.

Sometimes, we find what we want by also finding out what you don't want. All of that is trial and error. Once you're in that pit, the trial and error is important. It's up to us; we've got to keep moving forward.

The way we do our architecture is to show that we can come up with our own solutions. We don't just take orders.

My folks were very practical. They were also kind of able to think outside of the box. They were not going to let circumstance paralyze them. They knew sometimes you just had to take some new initiative. I think they passed that on to all of us... If you don't find a way, you make one.

I take pleasure in discovering resourcefulness inside me.

Question everything. Don't try to emulate someone else's path. Look at what you have, the tools you have, the place you're in; know the rules, and break them.

Not being given everything encourages you to create... That was one of the first steps for me learning to invent things.

I'd say the best thing my parents passed on to me was to let me make my own mistakes and figure out on my age how to kind of see the world on my own.

When we launched, we had to figure out every problem - big or small - on our own.