Scott McCloud Quotes

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

I looked at the world of books and just went, Oh my gosh, if I'm writing novels, I'm on the same shelves as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Petronius - whereas with comics, they've only been doing them for a hundred years, and there's stuff that nobody's done before. I think I'll go off and do some of the stuff no one's ever done before.

Being on Netflix lets us be experimental. We can do crazy things.

I don't think it's a mistake to put every great idea into the first movie, because I've always said there won't be a second movie if you go 'we'll hold back these ideas for another one.

The danger with success in television is "Haven't we shot this episode before? Didn't we shoot this scene two years ago?" I think it's really hard to just take the risk from season to season and not be afraid to give the audience something completely different, and trust that they'll come with you.

It's fun to take a piece of formula and go someplace else with it and see what happens.

I think you've got to take the risks. There's no point playing it safe, because either you'll get bored or the audiences will get bored. Sometimes, you're going to make mistakes, and that's fine, but you have to take the risks. I think Pirates is one of the prime examples of that with Johnny Depp's performance, and part of the reason that people love it so much is that you watch it and go, "Gutsy, really gutsy!"

I felt, if I'm going to take on some of the most overdone material, which is men and women and affairs and betrayal of friends, I had better have a new take on it. I think my films come from a desperation not to be boring.

I think being in a place where there is nothing happening is very inspiring because you have to make your own fun, you are not reliant on imitating any other bands.

We do not want to repeat ourselves [in Doctor Strange] or do what's been done before necessarily, and when you have a track record now you can either do that and keep, this seems to work and let's keep doing this - which some people accuse us of no matter what, because I don't think they pay attention, but really what we do is say, 'Okay, we have a studio that trusts us and let's us do what we want for the most part with the creative.

The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal.

You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

Street skating, which is what I grew up with, is completely free of rules. You can do anything. When I see a skater go by, I think, What is this person going to do here? It's the same with people who write, who make music, who draw, who make movies. Creative people tend to have all of those different avenues in them.

Good storytelling for me is not so much technical expertise, which I know is applauded often; it's actually freshness of approach. It does mean you sometimes stumble and fall and make a horrible mess of things in seeking that freshness, but you should always keep trying to do that.

Let's use that to make as interesting and different and unique a story as possible and not just stay with the same thing.' And this movie is certainly the embodiment of that.

Signature film-making seems rather dull to me; it's about finding something you can do something with and running with the ball.

I think we shouldn't buckle up our creativity. You've got to experiment!

I just try to do things that make me excited. If I can find a way to surprise myself, then that's when I'm really excited to share something and really can stand behind it.

If you look at somebody like Sam Bee, she got to create her own thing without any expectations that there was a show there. That was probably liberating for them.

The Hardys were a huge influence on me becoming a wrestler. Not so much the moves themselves, but the concepts behind the moves: trying to be innovative and just being exciting.

I always look for projects that are risky and ones that want to do something unique. If audiences don't like it, you feel good knowing that you were brave enough to do something original. If they do like it, you feel like everyone is rewarded, because we all got to see something new.

Give the composer time to experiment, time to try out ideas. Also, the time to fail. When the composer has very little time, the temptation is to reach for stock ideas - ideas they know will work and have worked in the past.

I love improvisation. I mean, it's hard to edit, because things don't necessarily fall together - you have to find ways to give it a dramatic scope, shape. But it's so much fun.

Good films that get made are so few and far between. I want to write and direct more, but only so I can keep a fresh perspective.

I learned with 'The Disaster Artist,' when I was writing the book, the audience will follow you if you really try to do something different. The biggest thing is, you want to be genuine and try to surprise your audience with kind of a new direction.