Sarah Silverman Quotes

I think all my films have a different journey. Therefore, I take it as it comes.

Since I was a kid, I could make up stories, I could make up funny jokes and I could always do it. When I'm walking down the street or having dinner, ideas will hit me, and I write them down on matchbooks or napkins and throw them in the draw.

I love the joy in the improvisational creative process.

While you're making the film and working with the actors, if you want to have a little room to breathe and experiment and play, it grows, and you want that to happen. It's not enough to just shoot the script. You've gotta come up with new inspiration, as you shoot it. There's gotta be room for that and time for that, so it grows.

I love improvising.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out.

I hardly ever go into the studio with a work complete in my head. It emerges from communal activity.

If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

I've never been one of those guys who storyboards every frame, because that would take away some of the mystery and some of the fun.

Shooting should not be about delivering something I've prepared; it should be a live process of finding things out. When things happen that you haven't planned, that's when the film comes alive.

I don't even think about maintaining a relevance. I just think about what do I want to paint, what am I gonna do now, what am I gonna do later.

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

My general approach to writing fiction is that you try to have as few conceptual notions as possible and you just respond to the energy that the story is making rather than having a big over plan. I think if you have a big over plan, the danger is that you might just take your plan and then you bore everybody. I always joke that it's like going on a date with index cards. You know, at 7:30 p.m. I should ask about her mother. You keep all the control to yourself but you are kind of insulting to the other person.

Most of my bits are long stream-of-consciousness- type things, and when I'm doing them onstage, other places to take the theme or idea will hit me, and I just go with it.

Eh, it's not that attractive to have a plan. I know that if I ever feel that I need to make a funny movie, I’ll figure out how to write one. I’ll get it done. If I ever get some ambition, I’m gonna get some shit done.

You've got to remember that improvisers are writers and actors and directors all simultaneously. That's what's happening in real time because you're writing on your feet, and you are acting out the words and you are directing what the staging is. You're deciding what staging is.

I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun.

To work from nature is to improvise.

I like little collaborations where the other thing happens, where it's half-baked or it's improvised, and let's develop it together. "What do you want to wear? Do you have an idea?" All that's fun to do, and I like that, but it doesn't take anything away.

There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.

It's an improvisation on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you don't know how to get there. It's not linear.

I know very dimly when I start what's going to happen. I just have a very general idea, and then the thing develops as I write.

I sort of recognize it, as opposed to shaping it. Oh, that's a good idea, that's a good line. I wonder where I can use that. And when you get into a rhyme group like 'not,' you got a lot of rhymes, you got a lot of choices. The more you do it, the luckier you get.