David Droga Quotes

Frustration is fuel that can lead to the development of an innovative and useful idea.

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.

Inspiration can hit you in the head at any time in any context. It could happen in a conversation. Talking to someone at a party, you can get an idea. But you've got to remember those inspirations.

I was on the train from London to Paris, and all of a sudden it just popped into my head: I'm going to do the Don Loper fashion show from 'I Love Lucy.'

Maybe you're going to a concert thinking you're not going to hear anything but music. But you may walk away from there with an answer to a problem that you're carrying around with you that you didn't think you were going to hear about.

Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we're rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world.

I'm very grateful to have had many brilliant students and post-docs who have worked with me. Potential is often hard to spot, but a key factor is whether they express a genuine interest in the problem and how they have thought about it.

Today's business climate is not for me.

If I'm on my own, I'll speak to 'Monkey' to generate new stuff for the act. I mean, I don't do it for moral support, although I wouldn't say that's out of the question. In fact, I could do it, I might do it... yes, I think I should actually start doing it more.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

All this talk about inspiration and moment is nonsense.

I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.

If I'm flying to China, I can sit and think about a problem. Other scientists have to go to the lab. I'm always thinking about maths, even when I'm doing other things. A lot of the time you're going up blind alleys and it's very frustrating, but then you have a sudden rush of ideas. You can live off that for quite some time.

Oh, man, if in real life I was as cool and suave as Coach Taylor and had all the answers, things would be easier.

Actually just recently I came up with that idea, watching the movie 'Legally Blonde' and I was like, 'Cool, that's something I want to do.'

Sometimes, you have to be frustrated and do something unscalable and a waste of your time to be inspired.

It's a manic-depressive life. You run in here, you open your incubator, your experiment makes no sense, you think, 'I hate this job.' Then ten minutes later you think, 'Well, now, maybe I'll try this or I'll try that.' You do it because you know there will be an 'a-ha!' day.

I looked at one little print for a long time. It was called 'The Landing.' It showed men tugging on a rope, pulling a boat up onto skids out of the water. The thought occurred to me that I might paint such a picture.

I need, sometimes, individuals to spark an idea so that I can take off running.

I don't know exactly where the ideas come from. One day, a sentence just popped into my head - 'There was going to be trouble, and, hell, he just wasn't in the mood for it' - and I knew I had a novel.

Sometimes I like practicing, sometimes I don't. But I like the result... I hardly ever get discouraged. Maybe right when it's very hard to get something done correctly, but then the idea flashes through of how to fix it. And I get encouraged. And other ideas flow.

Every now and again, something will pop into my head when I'm driving or I'm in the shower, you'll just get an image and it stays with you. It doesn't have to be much, it doesn't have to be a story, it could just be an image. But it won't leave your head and that's when you know you've got something.

Real science is the greatest, most exciting springboard I have available to me as a writer, and I don't feel the least bit constrained by it.

I still don't know how to jump-start a car, even though it's been told to me a million times. But I do love thinking about how creativity works.

I love hanging out with skilled and motivated people.