Iris Apfel Quotes

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

Most songs I write are spur-of-the-moment-type things. I have to be spontaneous. If not, songwriting can bore me. There is no pre-design or idea of what I am going to do when I go into the studio. It's all like that for me. I could go in and write two or three songs in an eight-hour session. You can't over-think songs. You just can't.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

I never have a plan of what I am going to draw.

I don't know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I'm at during a particular moment in time.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

When I put my brush to canvas, I never know what I'm going to paint. It's like when you're walking down the street with your hands in your pockets, humming a tune, you don't know what you'll be humming five minutes from now.

Everything that I've ever made in my life is from my instinct.

I'd listen to a song and say, 'Hang on, I like that piano thing,' so I'd play the guitar like that and get the vibe from it, and it just evolved from the get-go. It was pretty obvious what to do; You don't think about rock n' roll: you just do it.

I just like being creative, whatever way I have to do it.

Acting isn't something that I think about very consciously, somehow that just doesn't work for me. I just kind of feel my way into it.

I imagine that when I am creating a song or a project or an album or putting some clothing together or cooking a meal, whatever it is, I don't really have a recipe. The fun part is to throw that big piece of clay in the middle of the table as hard as I can, and whatever shape it takes, that's what shape it takes, and then I start to carve away.

I have not made many conscious efforts to "re-imagine" songs. I just let them happen the way they're going to happen.

There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.

The ideas choose me, not the other way around.

Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to go its own way.

Ideas are the old-age of art. Artists have to keep young; they must not think too much - thought is death, while art is life. Such was Emile's viewpoint.

The most important thing is to keep creating and following my inklings as they come into being and acting on them.

If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already – the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of.

I love the joy in the improvisational creative process.

The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't want to see it... I had to start in the dark.

To be an artist means not to compute or count.