Michel Gondry Quotes

The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.

Although even when I am being idle I have plenty of food for thought both early and late - thoughts both about and not about art.

If your own mind is muddled, much more will the minds of your hearers be confused.

Creativity has two possibilities. One is that it arises out of your silence, love, understanding, your clarity of vision, your intimate friendliness with existence - then creativity is healthy. But if it does not arise out of meditation, out of silence and peace and understanding and love, then there is a danger. It may be arising out of your confused mind. It may be arising out of your insanity.

If you have a great day at work and you've been hit with all these great ideas and there's a lot of excitement on your team, your mind doesn't turn off. For years I've kept a pad of paper and pen by me at night, because things just occur to you.

Most people have their best ideas when they take their minds away from problems they're trying to solve.

I have written most of my melodies walking and I feel it is definitely one of the most helpful ways of sewing all of the different things in your life together and seeing the whole picture.

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it.

Inspiration is some mysterious blessing which happens when the wheels are turning smoothly.

You can't really think about more than one movie at a time. You're thinking about it consciously, and the subconscious is working too, and if you cram too much into your head, you don't get any ideas in the shower.

My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. In the morning, the milk is gone and there's a brand-new shiny idea by the bowl.

The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me.

A new idea is like carbonated liquid in a bottle. You just sort of shake it until the cork pops, then you write and write.

Sometimes I'm not even aware of some of the issues going on with me in my life until I sit down and start kind of looking for inspiration, trying to find something that inspires that creativity.

Every film has a lot of questions that you don't know the answer to, and you just hope that you figure it out. But I tend to like things that are hard; I don't know why.

In my own life, I found that whenever I wasn't sure what to do next, I would go and learn a lot, read a lot, talk to experts. I don't know how the human brain works, but it's almost magical: when you read enough or talk to enough experts, when you have enough inputs, new ideas start appearing. This seems to happen for a lot of people that I know.

If I have a writing problem, the minute I step away, there's a solution.

I believe that creativity is an important human experience and element in the same way as sleeping, eating, having sex.

The snappier lyrics come when I'm feeling really good and up. A lot of times, they come after I've just had a meeting with somebody that was uplifting, and you get home, and you're feeling playful or upbeat or whatever, and then they just seem to pop right out.

Showers last only 10 minutes, but you can't do anything else in there but think. The shower is probably the main place I come up with ideas. That's where I came up with the concept for OneVoice, my nonprofit organization.

If you are stuck on a problem, go for a walk and think about something else for a little bit. Going for a walk is very helpful for a writer because if you are staring at a blank page of a computer screen there is all this pressure.

After a day's fishing, I'll know the solution to something or have good ideas that were not accessible before.

What I love about research is when I'm having a bad day and I can't write, I'll just research some more, I'll learn some more and I'll have better command of the world of the film.

When I was a boy, my father used to criticize me for - it's hard to translate - I guess you could say 'mindless time.' Thinking what to do. I need to be bored so I can be pushed into doing something.

Never listen to music when you're trying go come up with a Big Idea.