Richard Ayoade Quotes

It's what still excites me most about acting: letting your imagination go places it's never been before. There's nothing better than that.

Well people love to go dirty and stuff like that. It's funny, because even really dirty things can kind of inspire, but all things inspire really dirty improv and monologues. So then really dirty things can inspire the exact opposite. It's kind of a crapshoot.

Having all those demons makes it interesting, for me. Coming back now and being completely sober is okay, but I do like going back into the messy area. It's an empowering thing to play now, but at the same time, I do like to play the dirty side more. So, we'll see if she slips, or something. Wendy is always on the edge.

I always loved theater and acting in plays and directing, writing little plays and directing friends in plays.

When I see an amazing play or movie, it inspires me as an actress and a filmmaker.

It's one thing to be sitting at a drawing board, alone in your home and coming up with a fantasy character, and drawing her whichever way you feel like drawing, then dealing with a real performer. All of a sudden, things change. It's amazing, in working with actors, how much I learn from them and how many new lines will come to mind because of their personality or their strengths.

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing with it.

[We often] criticize the people on TV: 'He just can't act.' 'You call that singing?' ... We get jealous not because we're evil, but because we have little artists pent up inside us.

I've always had a really great time being in movies and writing music when I get home. The more creative I am, the more it feeds into other creative aspects of my life.

The acting experience and the collaborating and creating the world, working on the piece, they're the same joys.

It's not what you play, it's how you play it.

I sort of have various sort of theories when people ask me about songwriting because it is a mystery. You don't really know. Sometimes you can do it and sometimes you can't. It's really peculiar.

Failure is built into creativity... the creative act involves this element of 'newness' and 'experimentalism,' then one must expect and accept the possibility of failure.

Performers love to perform - that's the thing that we do. I think one of the best things was being able to imagine anything that I wanted, anything that I came up with we could do, because this theater is unbelievable.

Most of the theater I've done in the past was when I was a kid or a teenager so it feels like being a kid again. I'm happier than I've ever been. You really get to go to work every day and play, and try different things. I don't know, I've never felt so lucky to do this job. So I hope to do a lot more theater.

I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is in thinking of what to play.

I feel so fortunate to get paid to be an actor. I pinch myself. I get it from writing, I get it from baking, gardening... I sort of open myself to the creative flow, which is hard to do, by the way.

At the center of everything we call 'the arts,' and children call 'play,' is something which seems somehow alive.

We actors are superstitious creatures. We do all the homework and we put all of the components together, but there's always one key aspect that we're not in charge of, really, and that's magic. You are always on the lookout for where and how that magic is going to ignite. When you have worked as much as I have and have sought it out as often as I do, you get very clear that it will come at very, very odd, unexpected moments.

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important.

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 have visions and ideas about different things. Other actors just inspire you, so writing is something I would love to do more of. I would really be interested in doing something in that vein, writing something for myself or someone else and directing for sure.

Because I came into acting late, my references come from real life. That's my biggest inspiration. It's probably the reason I moved back to New York. I'm just a lot more inspired by real life than I am by depictions of real life.

I started directing out of necessity, the first play I wrote in college because I didn't know anyone who could direct it.

Creative thought must always contain a random component.