Frank Gehry Quotes

You begin with the possibilities of the material.

The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.

I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions.

It's so important to work with material you can really mold and milk and create and evolve.

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?

I found the recording sessions very freeing because you can really try things. When you're filming something, if you're improvising a film and you're wasting film and wasting a cameraman's time.

Every film I try and make it the way I see it in my head, and it really just depends on the script and the people I'm working with or whatever interests me at that particular time.

You play with everything you've got. I'm not a lover of cheap tricks. I've always loved playing with people, but there's no rule about it. You try everything you can.

I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights.

To me it's just going for the moment that counts. Sometimes, I'll have all the elements there, and I like to play and push something, and to me, in the end, you do achieve things that you're not aware of in the beginning, even though you're there trying to get them.

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made. Almost no new classics resemble other previous classics. At first people see only the awkwardness. Then they are not so perceptible. When they show so very awkwardly people think these awkwardnesses are the style and many copy them. This is regrettable.

I personally think if you're given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way, the play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There's no doubt in my mind about it.

I'm trying to make something every time that feels new and surprises people. Hopefully at least one person. But it's not like I turn it off. I don't make a movie and then go back to my normal life. When I'm finishing one movie the next day I'm thinking about the next one.

I just try and do something good. But as a writer, you're slightly out of control.

Those titles, Executive Producer or actor, are unimportant. I always try to approach my role as an artist. The first thing you want to do, that you attempt to do as an artist, is to have some sort of input into the material that you are working on. That is how my process begins; I say to myself: "I want to do this kind of work or I want to do that kind of work."

In art there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists

I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they're hearing something other than what I'm hearing.

I really love printmaking. It’s like a mystery and you’re trying to figure out how to rein it in.

When I was living in Mexico, I started reassessing my drawing style, and plunged into a period of doing exercises and research to develop a new way to draw. The result was a style that implies more than it shows, and so, ironically, feels more "true" to the scene I want to draw than a style that is more specific. It seems to me that the reader's imagination is able to fill in the gaps more effectively than I ever could. Plus it's a lot faster and more fun to do.

...what I try to do is a good bad picture. I work it out very carefully, and then I do something that looks as if it went wrong.

While you're making the film and working with the actors, if you want to have a little room to breathe and experiment and play, it grows, and you want that to happen. It's not enough to just shoot the script. You've gotta come up with new inspiration, as you shoot it. There's gotta be room for that and time for that, so it grows.

When I first started writing, a friend said I should be careful because I'm letting people know how to reach right in and play with my workings. And they do!

When you're in the studio, you've got a narrative for what goes on, you might switch on a bit of gear and it might not work as you intended or come out a bit wrong, and you try and exploit it.

We're just gonna keep making things and challenging ourselves to make them more cheaply and more renegade and more interesting. That's the only thing we might challenge ourselves to do in the age of so many movies and so many TV shows. We're aware that we're asking time of people to watch stuff, and that there's so much stuff to watch, so we're gonna try to offer you something unique. And it may not always succeed, but it will definitely be different.