Mandy Ingber Quotes

I never stop to plan. I take things step by step.

I'm a goal setter, but in broad strokes. I don't have a by-October-2009-I-want-to-be-here plan. All I do is work with an element of challenge and an element of enjoyment. With that, anything can happen.

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

I'm always surprised at what I actually end up doing because I don't have a strategy or a game plan, especially now that I'm making my own choices.

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

I try to avoid long-range plans and visions - that way I can more easily deal with anything new that comes up.

No dance has ever turned out the way I thought it would, because I trust enough that I can start something with some ideas and then it takes itself somewhere.

I don't really plan ahead very far. I have never known what I'm doing more than a few pages ahead.

I don't make long-term plans, for sure.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

I don't plan. I don't think, 'I have to do this kind of part 'cause I've done that kind of part.' I'm not a very good planner.

I think there are actors who are like, 'Okay, what am I doing, how am I doing it, what's the appeal? Tell me what to do, what are the exact lines from the script? Okay, I got it.' I am not that way. I would be a terrible bus driver. I'd want to be like, 'Oh, let's take this side road! Let's see what happens when we go down this back alley.'

When I was younger, I talked to the adults around me that I respected most about how they got where they were, and none of them plotted a course they could have predicted, so it seemed a waste of time to plan too long-term. Since then, I've always gone on my instincts.

There are people who are able to plan their career, their future, but I've never had any talent for that. I just do things and hope for the best. Say yes, take a chance, and sometimes it's terrific and sometimes it's not.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

Really, I'm never much of a goal-setter. Whenever I've tried to make big, solid plans, they don't happen. I'm more into whatever the circumstances are that present themselves, making wise decisions around that.

I think that's the thing I learned at 'Saturday Night Live' - any time I would try and strategize, I would always, always fall on my face. Things worked out when I tried to make it about what I was feeling at that moment and what I was into in that moment of my life.

There's actually something interesting about having no rehearsal time - you have to just walk in and go with your gut, which is exciting.

I don't have that much forward planning about what I want to do next, or in the future.

The whole thing about the way I approach work is to be surprised by an opportunity when it comes up. So I have no idea what I will be doing next, and I kind of like that.

I don't seem to have ever had a plan, but I have always been quite good at walking through doors when they are opened. I am never any good at anticipating what will happen next, but I always go for it when it does.

I am more of a surprise kind of guy. I love to find out as I go.

In real life we don't know what's going to happen next. So how can you be that way on a stage? Being alive to the possibility of not knowing exactly how everything is going to happen next - if you can find places to have that happen onstage, it can resonate with an experience of living.

I've never had a clear road map. When things come along, I benefit.

I don't really plan. I'm almost intuitive about things.