Chad Harbach Quotes

Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.

I do think the first time you read a script, that gut response is very important, and that probably plants a seed that continues to blossom throughout the whole experience.

One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts.

I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it's leading me and I'll follow the process through, and it's not until after I've seen it that I truly understand why I'm doing this.

In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later that violates the text as it came, that begins rewriting the words, is fake.

Very rarely is there any confusion as to when a painting or a song is finished. You just know when it's done.

Structure that really pays off is all based on emotion. I don't write down an elaborate plan. It's really done by feel. It's one area of my writing that I think I've got surer at as I've evolved.

Every now and then, I feel terribly uncomfortable with what I'm working on, and then I think maybe I am an artist. I'm not very articulate about it, but I do know that you have to follow your gut.

When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don't know what that is; I don't think too much about that.

When I'm writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I'm doing it, as I'm writing it.

I think there's a natural system in your own head about how much violence the scene warrants. It's not an intellectual process, it's an instinctive process.

I never overtly analyse my own movies, I don't think that's my job to do that. I just muddle through and do what I think is best for the movie.

In scoring, I usually start with a sound or group of sounds, searching out what feels right.

When I'm sitting in the studio, a mix isn't done till I feel it in my gut.

I've done some things I've been scared to see. But you can kind of feel when you've got a hit on your hands.

If I'm writing the music, and I don't feel like its really connecting inside, then I'll know there's no reason to really put a lyric on it; it's a waste, and I'll throw it.

I don't tend to say it's time for one of this or that genre. Things flow to you in a strange way, and why you bump into a certain kind of thing in one moment is...it's hard to explain.

To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing... When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.

All decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis.

There's no way to learn how to write a hit song. There's no formula for it. You just have to have it inside of you.

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

Painting does not come from intelligence so much, as from sight and feeling and invention.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork... they will receive my new work als they always have when something new presents itself: with indignation and screams of scorn.