Simon McBurney Quotes

I never had any master plan about directing, and I don't really write.

I've never had a plan. You look for different actors you want to work with or different subjects you want to explore, or sometimes it's just a momentary fancy.

I really don't work to a plan, but I just do what interests me and what I like to do.

I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry.

I don't plan an awful lot in life just as I don't plan an awful lot in my fiction.

I think there's always this idea in your head, but you have to allow the film to take its own course.

It's not so much that I got that idea at some point, it came up naturally because of the improvisational nature of the story I was telling.

I just write what comes along. I don't have a detailed master plan.

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

There's never anything planned. I just do what I feel is best for the song at that time.

My general approach to writing fiction is that you try to have as few conceptual notions as possible and you just respond to the energy that the story is making rather than having a big over plan. I think if you have a big over plan, the danger is that you might just take your plan and then you bore everybody. I always joke that it's like going on a date with index cards. You know, at 7:30 p.m. I should ask about her mother. You keep all the control to yourself but you are kind of insulting to the other person.

Any carefully planned thing destroys the creativity. You can't think your way through a story; you have to live it. So, you don't build a story; you allow it to explode.

I'm very specific about scripts that I like. I don't have a master plan or, like, a game plan. I don't have a chart that I'm following or anything like that. I'm very much playing it by ear. Certain things just happen and it's undeniable, you just go that way. But I don't have a specific path I'm following, I'm just playing it by ear.

I've never had a method of working. I change according to circumstances; I don't employ any particular technique or style. I make films instinctively, more with my belly than with my brain.

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

Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

I don't get wrapped up in technique and the like.

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

I still approach a scene as one would approach a solo. There's nothing set or pat.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Basically, I just write whatever story grabs me rather than considering the genre.

I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out.

I use a Bruce Lee technique: 'The way of no way.' He had the idea that he would learn everything, so that whoever he had to fight, he could improvise anything. The best way of starting a gig is just to not think of anything - to clear your mind, not in an empty Zen state, but more just to go on and see where you go.