Gerhard Richter Quotes

The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

Life isn't a science. We make it up as we go.

I like uncertainty in roles, and I like uncertainty in art, really.

I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.

Really interesting things come because you don't know what the rules are, what you can and can't do.

I've never followed a list in my life, and that's probably what has created so much nervous energy in my body.

I think there are actors who are like, 'Okay, what am I doing, how am I doing it, what's the appeal? Tell me what to do, what are the exact lines from the script? Okay, I got it.' I am not that way. I would be a terrible bus driver. I'd want to be like, 'Oh, let's take this side road! Let's see what happens when we go down this back alley.'

Spontaneity, the hallmark of childhood, is well worth cultivating to counteract the rigidity that may otherwise set in as we grow older.

I'm just working and having a good time and seeing what develops, which is so awesome, because you don't know what's going to happen, and I'm letting myself do that a lot more than I ever have.

I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

If I planned everything out in advance, I'd expire of boredom.

I'm not afraid of chaos and I'm happy talking to strangers. I really love not knowing where I'm going.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.

I'm not a planner. I like to try something different, to just see what happens.

I like to improvise; I think it's just a healthy thing to do, to keep everything loose and fun.

It's really fun to just stretch out and not have any boundaries or just try something for the craft.

If you create a place where anything can happen, anything will happen.

This isnt the time to make hard and fast decisions, this is a time to make mistakes. Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere. Fall in love, a lot. Major in philosophy, because theres no way to make a career out of that. Change your mind and change it again, because nothings permanent.

Play is experimenting with chance.

I would like the work to be non-work. This means that it would find its way beyond my preconceptions...It is the unknown quantity from which and where I want to go. As a thing, an object, it accedes to its non-logical self. It is something, it is nothing.

Artists of all disciplines must be willing to go into the dark, let go control, be surprised.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

You have to free your mind to do things you wouldn't think of doing. Don't ever say no.

The nature of creativity is to make space for things to happen... We can drive it out with our busyness and plans.