David MacKenzie Quotes

Most of the time, I don't like planning out too far ahead. I like to be spontaneous, make decisions, and go, 'Hey! That inspired me! I want to do more with that!'

I'm always amazed by writers who tell me they plan everything at the beginning. I feel their writing days must be very bland.

If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.

I write anywhere - when I have an idea, it's hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn't be disturbed; it really filled my day.

As an idea occurs to me, I'll either follow it or not, but I'm more instinctive than master-planner about stuff.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

I've never been one of those guys who storyboards every frame, because that would take away some of the mystery and some of the fun.

I think that the more comfortable and the more you rehearse - granted, I don't like to take the air out of a tire; there is a fine line - but I think the freer you are with your dialogue, for example, the more open you are to a good idea walking up to you.

I don't really plan too much ahead when I write, because otherwise, I get kind of bored.

Every time somebody asks me, 'Oh, when you mix your own music, what are you going to make?' And I don't know.

You shouldn't strategize your career if you're in a creative realm. You can't either. I love the unknown. I love the element of surprise. I've always felt really inspired by it. I love the spontaneity of the job. I think you can't really fight against it.

I hardly ever work from a synopsis -- I find they act like chains.

I'm strictly a one-project-at-a-time kind of guy. If I came up with a compelling idea for a different book while working on a project, I'd probably abandon the first project and go with the new idea.

I'm always open to new stuff. I don't sit and try to figure out what to do, I just wait for an idea to come.

I've never really had a certain style of music in mind that I make, or am really adamant on how something should sound, but I like the process of not knowing, of just seeing what happens and what comes out.

We figure to ourselves The thing we like; and then we build it up, As chance will have it, on the rock or sand,- For thought is tired of wandering o'er the world, And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.

I never really know what I'm going to write next until it comes to me. So we'll just have to see what happens.

I choose depending on the way I feel; randomly, in other words. When I haven't done anything for a long time, I always start small, on paper.

While you're making the film and working with the actors, if you want to have a little room to breathe and experiment and play, it grows, and you want that to happen. It's not enough to just shoot the script. You've gotta come up with new inspiration, as you shoot it. There's gotta be room for that and time for that, so it grows.

I've never had a block. I'm talking within the limits of my abilities. But in my own small way, I've had an embarrassment of riches. I'll have five ideas and I'm dying to do them all. It takes weeks or months where I agonize and obsess over which to do next. I wish sometimes someone would choose for me. If someone said, Do idea number three next, that would be fine. But I have never had any sense of running dry.

People ask me whether I think that one day I might wake up one morning and run dry, but I've had the opposite feeling - that I would die before I had time to write all the ideas in my drawer.

Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the harder it is to do. It's better not to think about it so much and just let it happen.

The composer makes plans, music laughs.

There is an exercise I teach at colleges: Get yourself a canvas and a bunch of acrylics and go into a very dimly lighted room. Dip a brush into one of the colors, slap it on the canvas, don't look, close your eyes, make a painting, don't look, turn the lights on and see what you've got. I think this releases people from the editor in their life that's always standing over their shoulder saying, "Oh, you don't have any talent; who do you think you are?"

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.