Spike Jonze Quotes

I veer away from trying to understand why I act. I just know I need to do it.

Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'

Most of my choices come about through some kind of intuition or instinct, and if I need to, I'll post-rationalize them, intellectually, afterwards. But generally, they come about just by feeling.

I know what I want to do even before I know why I want to do it.

That is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we feel; we just feel.

The idea of trying able to explain why you do what you do is absurd.

We are rarely wrong when we act from impulse.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

I just go with my gut.

A lot of the stuff you do as an actor - or I do, because I can't speak for everyone - is not always consciously thought out. A lot of the time, for me, it's actually just feeling stuff, and it happens all in the moment and your body reacts.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

I'm very unpredictable, but at the end of the day, I'm working. Sometimes things change in my life. It's like, 'Hold up - that ain't feel good. That felt good.' And that's how I look at anything I do.

Introspection! I hate it!

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

There's almost a fear that if you understood too deeply the way you arrived at choices, you could become self-conscious. In any case, many ideas which are full of personal meaning seem rather banal when you put words to them.

It is a poor head that cannot find plausible reason for doing what the heart wants to do.

I feel like I'm still at a point where I have a lot to learn from watching myself, so I find that it helps. But it's always weird.

A buddy of mine is doing a documentary on decisions, and they're not based on a ton of logic. It's mostly how you relate to them emotionally.

As cognitive beings, we rationalise everything. So, I think that's why nemeses are, in general, fascinating to observe, because they decide to act on feelings that we, most of the time, rationalise.

I try not to be in my head too much, I just try to do what feels right.

I just follow my instinct.