Carter Burwell Quotes

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.

It's important to have people who will say to you that you're really off the beaten track.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

I don't want a lot of guys like me who played the game. Quite frankly, I want blank canvases; I want people to come in with new ideas. I don't want the biases of their own experiences to be a part of their decision-making process.

If you define eccentricity as creativity, then yes, creativity is eccentricity.

Since when was genius found respectable?

Outrageous behavior, also known as the lunatic fringe, is the seed bed of innovation and creativity.

It's like that Simpsons joke - they're filming a cow in a movie and they go, 'OK, we'll tape a bunch of cats together to make a cow', and it's like, 'Why don't you just use a cow?'. For some reason that is novel - like, 'Oh, my guitar sounds like a piano and now if I can just get my piano to sound like my guitar'.

In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.

I think my family knows that I'm slightly off the wall with my way of thinking, so I think they're quite used to my weird and wonderful creations.

It's something I have always tried to do in my career - play outside the box.

Genius is often called crazy, but crazy is never called genius. So you just have to put out the work and let the chips fall where they may.

I don't ever want to do anything that's obvious, and I also want to find ways to do things that are extremely new and exciting and can make sense in bizarre ways. I always want things to make sense in really bizarre ways.

Creative people are often considered crazy but I believe crazy can be a good thing.

If your mind is at work, we're in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we'll come up with something original.

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.

Pure innovation is more gross than error.

I get curious about new things. My real strength is going into a field that has not been investigated before, and finding new approaches to it.

I think a lot of people study the rules too much and then don't know how to be creative.

Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.

I want to do everything I can possibly do to step outside the box.

I've got a feeling that with the best coppers - and in fact the best people in any field of work - what sets them apart is a maverick quality. People who are not afraid to bend the rules in order to achieve the universally desired end.