George Clooney Quotes

You don't know what the country is ready for unless you're pushing that envelope, and I was told that I couldn't develop 'Will and Grace'.

When it comes to storytelling, not taking risks is riskier than swinging for the fences. I have very simple ambitions when it comes to taking risks in storytelling and programming. I try very hard to avoid the expected.

Everyone is trying to do something that hasn't been done and that's a really good thing. You can only do so much with a story and some scripts don't give you the opportunities and other scripts do give you the opportunities to do things that haven't been done before.

I feel every day that everything I create - everything I do - I want it to be a risk. I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

It was actually the enormous risks I took with my pictures, skating right up to the edge of non-acceptance, that paid off so handsomely.

I'm always drawn to writing things that feel like uncharted territory.

We all feel that if we have a crazy idea that might get laughed at, there's nothing wrong with seeing if there's a crazy writer out there who agrees with us and can take it to a crazy network and somehow bring something that's a little bit daft and edgy to life.

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.

I've sort of made a reputation by high-stepping my way out of genre. As soon as somebody says, 'He does this,' I'm not standing there anymore.

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful.

I don't like playing standards. I like to do my own cutting edge work.

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.

It is so important for designers not to run scared, and not to be too worried about what's safe and what's commercial.

And I hate to see artists who are real safe. I love to see artists swing for the fences sometimes.

I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

I feel it would be a huge mistake for 'Vogue' always to be completely tasteful, completely perfect. I think it's very important for us to also rock the boat.

The thing I'm most proud of about - not all of our movies, but a lot of our movies - is that you might love 'em, you might hate 'em, but most of the time, they're trying to be different or trying new things, which I think is really important.

I don't want to only make the movies that studios will greenlight.

I think we shouldn't buckle up our creativity. You've got to experiment!

I don't want to just make the safe, easy commercial films.

If you don't take a risk then what's the point. We can't keep making films in the same space.

I remember on my very first film, which Steven Soderberg executive-produced, he said, 'Try not to repeat yourself. Do things that scare you.' Even if it's a challenge, I want people to say that this guy tried this thing. Hopefully he learned from it.

I think it's very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.

Defying genre conventions is instantly a risky move.

If one wants to change the way things are, one has to take risks and be part of different kinds of cinema, despite not knowing how it will be received. That's what thrills me.