Cass McCombs Quotes

When I do short films, I try to do something completely out of my comfort zone, out of my element.

Pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable - to me, that's something I'm definitely interested in and want to pursue.

We're all trying to be artists making our own unique statements. I think the only real way to do that is through failure.

If you have the opportunity to try different things, you should try different things and step outside your comfort zone and see what works and what doesn't work.

I don't think you can create anything interesting from a comfort zone. You have to work from a place of fear and failure.

An artist should be taking risks. That's the whole idea of being an artist.

It's good to try stuff. I wrote a book that I threw away, and I think I just wrote it so I could try stuff in it and not be scared

Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

How can you go out on a limb if you do not know your own tree? No art ever came out of not risking your neck. And risk--experiment--is a considerable part of the joy of doing.

I think doing something that's different, that's out of your comfort zone is important.

It's fun to be on the edge. I think you do your best work when you take chances, when you're not safe, when you're not in the middle of the road, at least for me, anyway.

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

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.

I like surprising myself. I don't want to do the norm, do what I'm always known to do, write how I like to write.

One of the things I've tried to do in my career is really write different kinds of books, so I'm able to broaden people's expectations of what I'm allowed to do.

When I started, my teachers told me that I had to sing 'Mozart, Mozart, Mozart.' I said, 'No, I want to sing all the other stuff.' If you do not push yourself, you will stay the same. Maybe some singers are happy with that, but I have to move, I have to do something new always.

Often, the fact that I haven't done something as a writer is all the reason I need to try it.

The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience.

I feel every day that everything I create - everything I do - I want it to be a risk.

All I really want to do is things I haven't done. 'I'm gonna put a paper bag on my head and be on the cover of 'Billboard,' see what I can get away with - if they'll let me.' And they let me. And I am literally giggling inside for, like, a month that I got away with it.

I try every day to do something that I've never done before or make some sound that I've never made before.

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.

I think comics do need permission to fail. I think comics do need permission to go up and try stuff.

I was the first records editor at Rolling Stone, and there were no rules. There was nothing to fall back on as to how do you write about this kind of music, so people were trying absolutely everything with a great sense of freedom and experimentation and success and failure, and a feeling of, “My God, people are actually paying attention to this. Let’s pretend they aren’t because we don’t want to be intimidated by what somebody might think of what we’re saying.

I think when you're really passionate about something, and maybe not every person is like this, but I think there's a large group that feels deep inside, I want something different, I want something more, I want to go on my own path. It's being comfortable being uncomfortable. Because to do that, you're going to have to jump outside of the comfort zone and it isn't going to be perfect. It's going to be scary. And to me, that's when great things happen.