Jodie Foster Quotes

...when you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that's why I don't think there's any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead.

I find that in the process of making a film you're constantly discovering things that you never even imagined would work at the beginning.

It's a lot of fun to be a part of films that you don't exactly know how they're going to turn out.

It's so funny when you're actually directing because things start popping that you don't expect to pop, and something that you think is going to pop, maybe doesn't quite have the impetus that you thought it might.

To me, the best projects are the ones where you have a pretty good idea of what the spine of it's gonna be, but then all sorts of things happen that you could've never predicted, and those are the magic moments of the films.

I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.

I'd never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people's work since I didn't care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings.

Beginning a poem, the poet as a rule doesn't know the way it's going to come out, and at times, he is very surprised by the way it turns out, since often it turns out better than he expected; often his thought carries further than he reckoned.

There are times when a film turns out differently from how it was narrated. But I don't look at it as a bad thing.

Great films happen, and no one can make them on intention.

I think making small movies reminds you of the effort. When you make big movies, the effort is to fight for freedom. When you make small movies, the effort is making the day, making the budget, and it's great, too.

When you try to put everything into music, there's no room left to try to make you think we're cool. We know you think we're cool.

Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

Sometimes your fans are way deeper than you are. They think you meant something like this big power-of-the-world thing that you said, but really you were just trying to find a word to rhyme with another word.

The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and with the hope that it would always remain in the present.

I think every time you take on a new role, you're trying to help find that voice and you add your own bits and pieces along the way but with Noah [Baumbach] it's already done.

I think that I get different kinds of joy out of directing a film and acting, and it's sort of necessary to just be doing one and focusing on that. I'm in awe of anyone who tries to be an actor-director, so I couldn't really see that.

Those of us who make films try to make something that we're feeling and that we would like. Then we just hope an audience responds the same way. It's very important to have the electrical circuit made, but I don't have control over how people feel when they flip the switch. So the whole idea of marketing research and test screenings is just foreign to me.

When you're writing, at least when I'm writing, I don't think about themes and I try not to sermonize with any particular message.

My thing is about following the accidental, more than trying to paint an accurate bowl of apples. I enjoy most following the paint. It leads me somewhere else. I think I enjoy just letting the magic unfold and letting the spirit of the paint tell me where we're going.

When recording, whatever you first think about, you come out with something totally different at the end of it. Whatever plans you have you throw away, because it's always going to end up sounding pretty different from what you initially thought of. I probably only had about five or six songs when I started, and it just sort of flowed from that.

How do you complete a painting, really? There are paintings by so many different artists that are interesting precisely because they haven't really been completed.

What you don't want is to repeat a formula over and over or impose a formula to a movie that...when you impose yourself and you impose a formula and you're not open to explore and to find what is right for the movie, I think you're doing a disservice to the story and what you're trying to express.

Artists of all disciplines must be willing to go into the dark, let go control, be surprised.

I don't think you need to be so result-oriented when you're trying to define the success of an art work. I think we can allow some unpredictability.