Mason Cooley Quotes

You don't know what the country is ready for unless you're pushing that envelope, and I was told that I couldn't develop 'Will and Grace'.

Being an artist is in part an act of rupture.

The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.

To be able to create fully, it's maybe fine that you learn the rules, but you have to forget and to rebel against those rules.

My whole career is based on taking a left turn after each film and doing the opposite of what I've just done.

Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you.

As a creator, I always want to betray fans' expectations.

What people don't realize is that when you start making things outside of the convention of what is normal or good or 'best practices,' you're also shedding some of the baggage that comes with the concept of what a game 'should' be.

Just finding ways to be not provocative for provocative's sake, but to show an idea that hasn't been shown before, I mean that's interesting to me.

My philosophy through all my work, be it on canvas or on the street, is about pushing boundaries and not going with the flow because everyone else is doing something a certain way.

I spent the first part of my career trying to avoid genre because I felt like genre, in some way, was cliche.

Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, "It's better this way." But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.

Isn't art about breaking rules, about challenging existing systems, isn't it about discovering meaning in things or situations before others see anything in them??

I'm at the point now where I know I'm doing something right when a movie gets mixed reviews, because then I'm not in the box. I don't want to make it too easy for people and I don't want to make it too easy for myself. I want to try something unusual.

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

Hip-hop can be limiting and I refuse to accept limits.

I think I'm always trying to subvert conventions, and sometimes it's more successful than others.

Everything that an artist does is a risk. Some people want you to stay the same. If you want to evolve, they want to keep you in a certain place.

If a musician dares to get out of the box he's been put in, people get confused. They want people where they can find them! I am fortunate in some respects as I've always been known as someone who 'moves around' and tries different things. But generally, we are supposed to stay where we're put.

What's frustrating to me is when, on a low-budget movie, people don't take chances. A big-budget movie, that script's your bible; nobody's going to risk going off the page. But when you're doing a very low-budget film, why not take some chances, intellectually, artistically?

Redeeming subjects from cliche is its own pleasure and privilege.

I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly.

Shakespeare showed me that once I understand the rules, I can break them.

I wanted to make my sophomore film as different as possible. I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I didn't want to be identifiable.

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful.