Iris Apfel Quotes

Given New York City's cultural diversity, it has always attracted creative people.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that's good.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.

I have learned to create from a hybridized point of view. It's an asset - something rather liberating.

Los Angeles is a melting pot for all different cultures and creativity. It's really a ground to cultivate artists.

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.

In improvising, you've got your scale; you've got the notes that are going to sound good with other notes, the intervals that are going to sound good. But you've also got all the chromatic possibilities, the possibilities of sounding dissident, of being unexpected.

I would just stand there puzzled, then realize this would be a great place to make a show.

I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.

That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something.

It is my great good luck the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues.

Jazz can be a blank canvas full of possibilities.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

I'm half-Welsh, half-Russian. My maternal grandmother is Russian. I've very much a mongrel, which is good in a way because it makes me quite a blank canvas.

I'd rather play here in this small bar and just do a good show. Because it's fun and there's no expectations, it's encouragement to be different, do something new.

When I see a wall that's hung with different objects, framed or unframed, what I like about it is its fluidity and rule-breaking nature. Just experiment a bit.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.

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.

You know. I'll try anything. I'll do anything. I'll explore. Try different takes. All that kind of stuff to do sometimes, to do good performances, but always conducive to having a good time creatively.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.