Michael Haneke Quotes

The show, like everything we have done and still do, is just one more experiment.

Your responsibility as an artist is to experiment.

My idea of artistry has always been 'try everything until you find out what works.'

The entire making of 'Within and Without' was a series of experiments and trial by error. When I started writing, I didn't have a strong idea of what the record was going to end up like.

Half of art is accident, but there is no accident without free experiment.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

You can't buy something which does not exist. In a way, let's make things exist and then judge later. Don't cancel the process of creativity too early; let it flow.

There's no way to really mock up or simulate what I'm doing until I'm there. An exhibition for me is not a statement but an experiment.

I consider all my films experiments.

Musical accidents are a gold mine. The thing about accidental discoveries is they won't be made unless you put yourself in a position to make that discovery. To do that means hundreds of hours, days and weeks where you do things and don't discover anything.

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

Well, every movie is an experiment. And the only way you can grow at what you're doing is to take chances. You can't try to stick with what worked last time.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail

You have to have an unlimited imagination, an unlimited restraint on your inhibition when you're working. You have to even dare to fail, even in a scene, whatever it is.

Give the composer time to experiment, time to try out ideas. Also, the time to fail. When the composer has very little time, the temptation is to reach for stock ideas - ideas they know will work and have worked in the past.

For me, as an artist, I think you have to experiment.

I miss that thing I used to do when I first started out where I would just spontaneously generate ideas and try things and see where they'd go.

Every day, I'm trying to push the boundaries creatively, and sometimes it does push the boundary too far, and that's what I had to learn.

I think if you're a creative person, then you're always kinda looking to move things along - 'Where else can I go? Where can I take this?' From painters to photographers - anything creative in the arts - if you're a true artist, I think you'll always look to do something else. 'Where else can I go with it?' Do you know what I mean?

Every great inspiration is but an experiment.

A lot of it's experimental, spontaneous. It's about knocking about in the studio and bumping into things.

You do stuff that gets a reaction and you think 'that's a winner' and then it never sees the light of day. But the thing with improvisation is that 90% of what you come up with won't be used and for good reason. But you keep going for the occasional gem that you might come up with. You do a scene and a lot of the time. We wouldn't cut. So, you come up with something that might be funny and then you go, 'alright, what else'? So, you kind of throw stuff against the wall and see what happens. But you've got to be prepared to make a fool of yourself.

There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.