Richard Schiff Quotes

I think, like all big things, you don't know they're going to be a big thing when you start. You just kind of, like, play because it's fun, and it's interesting, and then it turns out to be way more important than you expected.

I've only ever had surprises. My whole career's a surprise!

Predictability is the cousin of death: I don't necessarily want people to see me coming. You know?

Well, I didn't really have a plan. I just wanted a hit.

You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.

Sometimes if you jump into something too quickly, you can screw up something that might have been good two years down the road.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

What you think is going to be a big break or opportunity can sometimes turn into the opposite, and vice versa.

I don't stay in one discipline because it's more lucrative than another. In fact, the most successful thing I ever did was 'Just Kids,' for which I had absolutely no expectations.

Who likes surprises? Nobody I know likes surprises. But facts change on the ground.

In every one of my scientific expeditions, the most significant findings were things I didn’t expect and was not originally what we were studying.

In my mind, declaring that an unfamiliar task will yield low-hanging fruit is almost always an admission that you have little insight about what you're setting out to do.

I understand the law of sowing and reaping. It is a spiritual law that has tremendous physical implications. Every time that we delay or frustrate what we can do today, leaving it till tomorrow, we hold back the future. We, too, must reap what we have sown by experiencing delays.

You just can't get surprised when you get surprised, because weird stuff just comes over the transom all the time, and it's not necessarily anything that you've planned for or anticipated.

My career was prematurely launched. I didn't have a plan.

Projects you think are no-brainers stall, and other things see the light of day. You never count anything out.

Postpone joy, it will diminish. Postpone a problem, it will grow.

Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.

The main reason for people's lack of success is their willingness to give up what they want most of all, for what they want right now!

I can't imagine being quite as lucky at any other time - I certainly never have been before. That goes right down from my producing partners to people like Eddie Vedder. But the two things that make me feel that this was meant to be now and not before was that the story itself has more resonance today - I find it a more important story today than it was then - and Emile.

Quite frequently, he who goes too fast gets there too late - or not at all.

I've never been able to develop a movie over several years, and keep coming back to it and adding to it. I get excited by the spark of an idea, and if I can't go make that, there's another idea that comes along that I get excited about. It has to happen quickly, in order for it to happen, at all.

The right decision is the wrong decision if it's made too late.

Everything comes to him who waits -- if he waits till it comes.

Was there any fate more bitter than to get what you long for most, when it's too late?