Naseeruddin Shah Quotes

Every time I do one I feel like I've never really quite learned anything. I always find that when I'm making a film, I find it a little bit like I'm doing it for the first time.

Life isn't a science. We make it up as we go.

I don't know why my pictures come out looking so good. I just don't get it.

When I started out, there were a lot of things I knew I couldn't do, and a lot of things I only found out I couldn't do by going and doing it. And no-one was watching, and nobody cared.

Your first projects aren't the greatest things in the world, and they may have no money value, they may go nowhere, but that is how you learn - you put so much effort into making something right if it is for yourself.

I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn't know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Anybody can do what I do.

If you wait until the right time to have a child you'll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it's bad.

I try to create a challenge for myself in each book. And sometimes, believe me, I just kick myself afterwards, and say, 'Why on earth did you ever attempt this, you idiot!' But I'm always better for the experience.

I didn't have any knowledge of the music industry when I first got to L.A., and I really didn't know on a creative level what I wanted to sound like, so I had to do a lot of experimenting. It led to a spiral of depression and being broke.

Who knows, maybe I am simply a talented architect?

I guess I didn't feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in certain directions or teach me certain things - not knowing what that would be.

Working on my own gave me a chance to take my time and experiment a lot.

It's important that people are open. Some people say, 'I'm going to be a doctor,' and they're a really good doctor. But for the rest of us, it's a big question mark. Just giving yourself a break, letting yourself try new things, and when something doesn't work out, moving along... it's all we can really do.

The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or a bad movie, it's just to see what you learn for the next one.

Everything I've done, I've made up. Some of that might have been right; most of it was probably wrong.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

I think what's so great about making your first feature film is that you're so naive in some ways; you don't know what to expect, and you don't question things as much because you're just trying to figure it out as you go.

I assume as a writer that most of the time I'm going to fall down and fail.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

I've been wrong so often, I don't find it extraordinary at all.

We had the freedom to make mistakes. That's something very important.

Sure, I got lost, which is an actor's worst nightmare. But it is a gift as well, because great things come out of being lost and unsure, especially if you have a controlling side or a perfectionist side, which plenty of us do.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The slightest thing can ruin a scene, but you must be willing to take chances.

People would say to me, 'Who do you want to be as an artist?' And I would just look at them because I didn't know.