Mike Patton Quotes

I don't like to box myself in when I'm composing.

A good emcee will rhyme a lot of different ways. Don't limit yourself.

A lot of improvisation and freedom went into 'Pinata.'

There is no such thing as a wrong note ... just as long as you're singing along.

It's impossible for me to feel like there's only one way to do a thing. There's nothing wrong with having one way of doing it, but I think it's a bad habit. I believe in range. Like, there's a lot of tunes that I play all the time-sometimes I hear 'em in a different register. And if you don't have complete freedom, or you won't let yourself get away from that one straight line, oh, my goodness, that's too horrible to even think about.

You have to be able to feel like you can play way outside of the box. If you're with a great filmmaker and someone you can trust, that's encouraged, and Seth was that kind of filmmaker and co-star.

I'm looking for something that gives me a chance to stretch. Because I have my own work, and I can do anything I want in my own work - juggle, tap dance, anything I want.

There's was no pressure on it for me - I just went in and had fun. Whatever Jason Moore, the director, asked me to do, I did it! I ran around the room acting like a crazy guest on "Jerry Springer" and yelling at the audience. I just went for it.

That's good when you don't know what you're doing. But you're doing it and it's spontaneous and you're not afraid.

Totally. I think things are beautiful when you don’t plan them, and you don’t have any expectations, and you’re not trying to get somewhere in particular. You’re just enjoying it, and making something because you love it, and love the people that you’re playing with. I guess everything happens as a reason.

Analysis kills spontaneity.

Acting is great. It's so much fun. It's a job where you literally get to do something that's a great experience, and then you try a new experience, and you take things from all of it.

I Still Approach A Scene As One Would Approach A Guitar Solo. You Don't Exactly Know How You're Going To Phrase This Or That. Which I Think Is Beautiful. That Idea Of Chance.

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.

Roaming through the jungle of "Ohs" and "Ahs", searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

Dustin Hoffman also never does the same thing twice which is totally stimulating because you're always getting something new from him. You never really know what he's going to do next, so you have to be on your toes.

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

At every concert I leave a lot to the moment. I must have the unexpected, the unforeseen. I want to risk, to dare. I want to be surprised by what comes out. I want to enjoy it more than the audience. That way the music can bloom anew. It's like making love. The act is always the same, but each time it's different.

It's fun to be loose. Just like on stage, all of your great ideas come from looseness.

To me, jazz is a place where anything is possible.

Improvisation is really not so much remembering things. And this is what I do when I play. I forget things. When I go on the stage, I want my mind to be a blank, so that I can - things can come into me without my knowing where they came from.

Jazz is my adventure.

I probably have the most fun on projects where there's some room to improvise.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.