Merce Cunningham Quotes

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.

Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.

As an artist, you don't think about the parabola or the arc you're describing or where you're going to ultimately end up, you're just kind of crawling around, seeing what's out there.

When I put my brush to canvas, I never know what I'm going to paint. It's like when you're walking down the street with your hands in your pockets, humming a tune, you don't know what you'll be humming five minutes from now.

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.

Every film that I make is an accident.

I am always living in the now, so I like what fate brings to you. That's always fun for me. To have a process and someone be like, 'How about this?' And you just grab onto that and see where it takes you.

Play is experimenting with chance.

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

A lot of what I do is about being in the moment and I think that's hard for people to get. I like it when things suddenly affect the painting. I mix up this red and it affects the whole painting or this little bit of white falls down there, and something changes the whole nature of the thing. The residue on what happens, that's what's in the paintings.

When I'm making a movie, I don't like to know what's going to happen next. I like to watch something and be surprised all the time, and just not know, and let it take me wherever.

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

I never have a plan of what I am going to draw.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.

I don't know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I'm at during a particular moment in time.

Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is.

No dance has ever turned out the way I thought it would, because I trust enough that I can start something with some ideas and then it takes itself somewhere.