Jonathan Nolan Quotes

I've got research, I have my own life experience I can apply, and I have my imagination.

Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

People simply learn to process information to the point where it doesn't serve true creativity.

We don't ask research to do what it was never meant to do, and that is to get an idea.

Analysis I take to be a scientific procedure. What I do is creative. It doesn't spring from the same part of the mind.

I say to my pupils, 'You can pitch me any thing you've got, but tell me why you're the only person who can write it in the world. Keep digging.'

There can be no technique or formula for creativity.

What I love about research is when I'm having a bad day and I can't write, I'll just research some more, I'll learn some more and I'll have better command of the world of the film.

I never thought innovation as such was very important. Not when you have to think about it... If you're going to come up with a new direction or a really new way to do something, you'll do it by just playing your stuff and letting it ride. The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

I always think it's a mistake when you actually have to set books aside and actually sit down and research something. I always think they've got to come from within.

I like to get input from all different kinds of listeners, including the really conservative ones, and sometimes those listeners steer me in a direction that I haven't seen. But at the end of the day, my vote is always to go in the direction that makes me the most excited.

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated, I would be a damn fool.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

I just do what I think is funny and what's exciting to me.

I think people who are regarded as better actors must have better instincts because, at the end of the day, once they say 'action,' it's you who has to do it right. You can do all the research and preparation or none at all, but it's your instincts that tell you, 'No, I'll do it like this.'

My sense of designing is a mix of intuition and intellectual control.

I enjoy doing things that involve research because it's part of what I enjoy about acting.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

Art, it seems to me, doesn't need freedom so much as it needs courage and love - some would call it 'soul' or 'Eros.'

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

It's really easy to project this whole ideology of what being an artiste is, and I'm just not down with intellectualizing it. I just think, if you feel like doing something, then do it.

What makes me different as a scientist is that I'm kind of imaginative. The ideas just happen.