Gallagher Quotes

If you start to just aim for what the audience wants to hear, you're already hamstrung because you don't have any freedom.

I'm obsessed with giving the audience something they don't see coming.

I want to evolve each season. I never want to be one of those brands where people know what they're going to see. I always want an element of surprise. One thing I never want to do is copy what anybody else is doing. I have a signature, and it's very important to me to stay true to that.

'Playing House' works because we're being supremely honest to what we think is funny and not what we think other people think is funny.

There has to be that zeal to do something new and surprise yourself and audiences. You have to stay true to your craft, and that should never be sidelined.

When I do an hour-and-a-half show, if I don't improvise 20 minutes worth of new material each night, I feel I've let myself down.

The only pressure I feel is to write good books. And to not replicate the previous book. Whether you have a thousand readers or a million readers it doesn't change the pressure. I never feel tempted to give the reader what I think the reader wants.

I don't rap like nobody, I don't try to sound like nobody.

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.

I like to make the music that I really love. You're supposed to make your favorite music that no one else played, and I'd like to just keep it at that and not really change it at all.

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

In the world of creativity, laziness translates into an inability to be rigorous enough to create fearlessly. It makes us plagiarise or water our creativity down to make it more acceptable to the public.

In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up.

My greatest desire as an actor is to keep people guessing and not do anything close to what I did last time.

Drama and comedy, to me, are all about being surprising, coherent, and true, all at once.

For me, what is most important is the element of surprise. If I can surprise you with every film of mine, that is exactly what I am trying to do.

Just trying to be different - when I hear something - I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds.

When I write a book... it's the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that's the only way you can write righteously. I have to ask, 'What do I want to hear?' not 'What do people want to hear?'

I think if you try to tailor your act to anybody, you end up with an act that doesn't work anyway.

You have to keep surprising your audience.

I've found that if you just try to make the film you want, you'll find the right audience. If you try to please everyone, you're going to make really boring films.

I never like to be the same, whether it be comedy or drama, funny or serious.

If I knew anything about what people wanted and was popular, I'd still be writing for 'Saturday Night Live'. I can only write what I want, and hopefully people will like it.

What guides me is to do work that's more avant-garde - things that I think are special. You can easily become a celebrity and get caught up in all that blur. I just want to work and surprise myself.