Naomi Shihab Nye Quotes

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.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is.

I've written in the middle of a conversation or the grocery store or at another band's concert or in the last moments before falling asleep. It's pretty unpredictable. I think it's always flowing, and sometimes I'm not listening. There's no formula for when I'm going to be able to be a good listener to myself.

The thing that makes writing so difficult is you don't have the element of serendipity. At least with a photograph, you can set up the camera, and something might happen. You might be a lousy photographer, but you can get a good picture if you just take enough of them.

The thing that always fascinated me about improv is that it's basically a happy accident that you think you're initiating.

The present moment is creative, creating with an unheard-of intensity.

Give your mind as long as possible to come up with something original.

Any carefully planned thing destroys the creativity. You can't think your way through a story; you have to live it. So, you don't build a story; you allow it to explode.

I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.

I'm very much a man of the moment. I can think about an idea for a year, two years, even four years all right, but what ever is going on with me the moment I write is gonna work it's way into the piece.

You've got to let accidents and strange things happen - let it work, so it's got an organic sort of quality ... By trying to remove yourself you can see some fantastic things sometimes.

A good film to me is like lightning in a bottle. I used to think that meant hit and run. But then I've changed my definition about what lightning in a bottle means. I think it means that you wait for that surprising moment that you really didn't expect would happen, as good as it may have gone in rehearsal.

I don't know what I'm going to be doing in two years or even in two weeks. I have to live for today.

Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.

You need messiness and magic, serendipity and insanity. Creativity comes from time off, and time out.

But just think what a dull world it would be if everyone was sensible,' pleaded Anne.

The beauty of the unexpected and unknown, and it's certainly very tantalizing for me as an actor. Other actors can't deal with that; they want to know, but then they make choices and decisions with that knowledge because that knowledge gives them forethought, and they can think about how they want to play something that takes away spontaneity of what they could be doing.

I don't like to have everything all worked out in my head because there's always a chance of it coming out different than you think it should anyway.

A lot of what I do is about being in the moment and I think that's hard for people to get. I like it when things suddenly affect the painting. I mix up this red and it affects the whole painting or this little bit of white falls down there, and something changes the whole nature of the thing. The residue on what happens, that's what's in the paintings.

I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time.

art happens. It happens when you have the craft and the vocation and are waiting for something else, something extra, or maybe not waiting; in any case it happens. It's the extra rabbit coming out of the hat, the one you didn't put there.

Each time I step on the basketball court, I never know what will happen. I live for the moment. I play for the moment.

Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.

Inspiration always arrives unannounced.