Stan Brakhage Quotes

There is no science in creativity. If you don't give yourself room to fail, you won't innovate.

When you're building a show from the ground up, there are no answers or wrong move, because there's no bible.

When you're in the editing process, you try different things and you get creative ideas.

You can't buy something which does not exist. In a way, let's make things exist and then judge later. Don't cancel the process of creativity too early; let it flow.

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.

Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.

I come in. I'm going to sketch, I'm going to drape, I don't know what I'm going to do.

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

I really like to experiment. That's the only way I can work. It's instinctive.

I knew I could make a living doing my own videos instead of making them for someone else.

It's very important to understand that we never do the same thing twice; each of our projects is unique. We'll never do another 'Gates.' Each project is a unique image. We do not know in advance how the work will look. I do preparatory drawings, but they are only projections of our vision.

I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can't name you 20 people outside those we've already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

I like to experiment a lot and invent things.

I think what's so great about making your first feature film is that you're so naive in some ways; you don't know what to expect, and you don't question things as much because you're just trying to figure it out as you go.

Good and bad ideas both come from the same fountain of speculation and experiment.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail

It's so important to work with material you can really mold and milk and create and evolve.

A lot of our creative flow comes from a place of curiosity and exploration. It often feels like we're excavating and asking questions and not just giving answers but really just exploring.

The writing process is the time where nothing's been set in stone. It's a blank slate, or a blank page.

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.

When I sit down and make videos, my No. 1 thought is that I want to make a video that I want to watch.

I miss that thing I used to do when I first started out where I would just spontaneously generate ideas and try things and see where they'd go.

Writing is a creative process, and you need to have the doors and windows of your mind open so that you have the possibility of change.

Sometimes I do that quite a lot, go back and forth a lot between ideas. Try things out.