Mark Bradford Quotes

Everybody wants you to do this thing that you've always been doing forever. That's what they want: they want Martin Scorsese to make the same film two hundred times rather than trying to be something different.

A lot of guys spend their lives saying no because it's an easier way to keep your job.

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

There's a real danger in trying to stay king of the mountain. You stop taking risks, you stop being as creative, because you're trying to maintain a position. Apart from anything else that really takes the fun out of it.

You've got these big studio films and these tiny independent films now. It's very much either/or. With the independent films, it's always a beautiful risk - it might never be seen. With the studio films, you're conforming to the formula of what's always been in place.

Studio people are idiots. Until they see someone else doing it and make a success of it, they don't open their minds. Most of them are idiots.

Everything that an artist does is a risk. Some people want you to stay the same. If you want to evolve, they want to keep you in a certain place.

Here's the thing: If you're taking roles that aren't intimidating you, and I think this is a cliche that a lot of actors say, but if it's not intimidating you, then why are you doing it?

I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you.

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.

I think there's quite a lot of cowardice in music. I don't mind if it goes wrong, I just want to go for it.

Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

It is not necessary to be too avant-garde, because you risk not being understood.

I think that if you've got 5 million people that enjoy drama and invest in characters, you must take the time to not worry about your job and getting sacked and just go for it and hit it again.

The French higher education system has not adapted to this revolutionary period. [It] rewards people for their capacity to follow the path that is open to them. It does not encourage people to rebel or to develop their character.

I'm attracted to things that make a point or have a certain point of view, but it's not a conscious thing that I decide to do every morning. Unconsciously, what I like has a social commentary in it, or it's about race, or it's risky to do. That's what I like doing.

In standup, it's just you. You're your own writer, your own critic, your own director, and it's never the same. You really don't always have it down. Your continue to learn, you continue to risk, and I really love it.

I think if you want to make a performance authentic, there are a certain amount of leaps of faith into the unknown that you have to take. Otherwise, you're not really risking anything. I think if you don't risk something in art, it's not really important.

I think we're so often, as writers, afraid of writing something that is less than perfect, and that fear paralyzes us. I'm a big fan of writing less than perfect things.

I don't like seeing talented storytellers ruled by fear.

If I had known my own limitations, I never would have taken the risk, and the risk led to one my greatest artistic and personal experiences.

The secret of the creative life is how to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We're all in the dirty laundry business and we're being paid to take risks and look silly. Race car drivers get paid to risk their lives in a more concrete way; we get paid to risk our lives in an emotional way.

Remember when you hear yourself saying one day that you don't have time anymore to read or listen to music or look at paintings or go to the movies or do whatever feeds your head now. Then you're getting old. That means they got you, after all.

Sadly, children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only.