Mike Mills Quotes

You can't control everything that comes to you.

We should all relax about life because you don't have a clue as to what's really going on.

Just true to form with life sometimes - what you're trying to do doesn't necessarily work out, but what ends up happening can be a lot better. I just relax and say whatever is going to happen - happens.

I tend to detach myself from movies once I'm done shooting them, because after that, it's in the hands of God. And it doesn't help if I panic.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.

I believe that you are only in control of so much. So whatever you are not in control of you can't worry about.

People struggle with moments of deep dread about life and moments of surety. Often within the course of the same day. Life is a roller coaster, especially if you take risks.

If you get too attached to how you want it to come out the other side, you freeze. I try to trust that it will work out in the end.

I got this idea about being afraid to let go of something and being afraid of sinking into a state of almost anesthesia, where you have to trust other people. Just the paranoia of it all. And it seemed to suit the frenetic track. So I just wrote it out and, you know, said it.

I've made peace with insecurity... because there is no security of any kind.

Sometimes when you film, you can be in a bit of a bubble, and then suddenly when you finish filming, it's taken out of your hands - it's not yours anymore, and we all love it so much that we feel quite protective of it.

I just took it one step at a time and let fate determine my destiny.

I surrender the idea of having some kind of control over the arc of my career a lot of the time because you never know what tomorrow's going to bring.

You can make all the birth plans in the world, but at the end of the day - go with the flow.

I think we spend so much of our lives trying to pretend that we know what's going to happen next. In fact we don't. To recognize that we don't know even what will happen this afternoon and yet having the courage to move forward - that's one meaning of faith.

There is some information that an actor doesn't need, and that's okay. I can't control everything. I don't want to control everything. Sometimes, you want to control everything, and you want to know the size of the lens and stuff like that. I am so relaxed as an actor because I don't want to control everything. I just want to control my part.

I'm not sure I always feel like I'm in the seat. Sometimes I'm only holding on by one hand and flying out behind the roller coaster. I don't know anybody who doesn't feel that way.

The security comes, as an actor, in knowing that you're not in control. If you try to control your career, or how people perceive you, you'll make yourself unhappy, because life doesn't work like that. So much is luck. It's much better to let yourself off, to think, 'There's nothing I can do.'

The truth, whether we admit it or not, is that grace scares us to death. It scares us primarily because it wrestles control and manageability out of our hands - introducing chaos and freedom.

So then put away, relentlessly away, all thought of the results. You cannot control them.

It's really hard as a screenwriter, you feel like you have a vision and then you turn it over to a director and you have to let it go.

I never make a choice thinking about the results. I'm never gonna take a role or a project thinking where this could - what this could bring me or something like that, because you've got no control about anything, actually.

You don't have any kind of control ultimately. Things are just going to happen as they will. And I think your best option sometimes is just to react rather than try to plan everything out in advance.

When you really put your heart and soul into something, the temptation is to try to be in control of circumstances, however you can, and looking and seeing how people are responding. But I realized, early on, that that was just not going to be a healthy thing for me to do.

Whether my film becomes commercially successful or not, only God can tell, or the box-office numbers. So why worry about it and get distracted?