Kelly Sue DeConnick Quotes

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I want to challenge myself, challenge my styles.

You have to be willing to be afraid if you're going to be an artist.

I'm attracted to seeing how different I can be, pushing the boat out.

Our responsibility as artists is to challenge ourselves.

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 think on some level, you do your best things when you're a little off-balance, a little scared. You've got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.

If you're not pushing your own technique to its own limits with the risk that it might just crumble at any moment, then you're not really doing your job.

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.

If you never take a risk, you will never know what changes you need to make.

I think every album you have to stretch further and further, give people another piece of you. But then I always try to deviate from the norm.

What all my years in improvisation taught is that - if you're going to grow as a performer - you have to try some new things. You've got to be willing to take a few risks.

The fun part for me is to just really push that envelope.

I've been scared and I've liked not hanging on to stuff where I know that I'm in my comfort zone.

I've written books as acts of discovery: things I need to know and that I need to touch. And it's very dangerous work to deal with the most toxic internal elements... I feel like Madame Curie at my computer. I feel like I should be hemorrhaging from my eyes and ears.

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

Risk is essential. There is not growth of inspiration in staying within what is safe and comfortable. Once you find out what you do best, why not try something else?

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.

Challenge yourself, jump off the deep end and learn to swim.

It seems like the more I live, the more I realize that saying 'yes' is almost never a mistake. If you say no, it might feel safe, but then you end up going nowhere.

I think it's important as a filmmaker, as any person working in the arts, that you've got to try new stuff and challenge yourself and take chances.

I do tend to apply myself to projects that make me uncomfortable because usually when that happens I try to find a way of existing in the project that is more creative.

Every New Year's Eve, I have a pact to do something I never thought I'd do. So I created this list. You have to free your mind to do things you wouldn't think of doing. Don't ever say no.

I like stepping out of my comfort zone.

I like learning stuff. The more information you can get about a person or a subject, the more you can pour into a potential project. I made a decision to do different things. I want to do things that have a better chance of being thought of as original. I do everything I can to disrupt my comfort zone.