Mary Chapin Carpenter Quotes

There's no way to really mock up or simulate what I'm doing until I'm there. An exhibition for me is not a statement but an experiment.

My absolutely favorite time of working on a project is the time I spend not knowing what it is. Because the longer you live inside that period, the likelier you are to discover something new.

U2's best work has always been when we didn't know what we're doing.

I think that every artistic venture is a risk, and it has to be that way, so you do as much preparation as you can and make that as thorough as you can possibly make it, until you turn up on set. It's about taking risks, and some might work and some might not, but that's what makes it interesting.

I really like to experiment. That's the only way I can work. It's instinctive.

People criticize you for trying new things. I think, 'I'm new! I'm 22!' I don't know exactly what my sound is or what I want my album to sound like, so I'm not releasing it yet. While I'm experimenting, I'll let you in on the journey, and you can hear it for free.

I'm never doing anything by rote. I'm only on thin ice, and I think that that's a good place to be. I feel like when you push yourself like that, the rewards can be pretty great.

I love starting a track in one place and not knowing where it's going to end up.

The entire making of 'Within and Without' was a series of experiments and trial by error. When I started writing, I didn't have a strong idea of what the record was going to end up like.

Every day, I'm trying to push the boundaries creatively, and sometimes it does push the boundary too far, and that's what I had to learn.

I really try to plot in a fearless fashion. I try not to care about not knowing the answer before I get there; I just jump in first and see what happens.

The studio and road both have their charms. The studio allows me to be a mad scientist and the tour lets me feel like James Bond.

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

The whole point of being an artist is to have no agenda. To say, you know, I don't know what I am going to do tomorrow, I don't know what it's going to look like, and I'm going to have a go at it.

To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, 'Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.'

To create something new is both thrilling and excruciating at the same time. It's great to have all these choices in front of you, and to have the writers in the room so you know exactly what they meant. But the downside is you want so badly not to screw it up!

I want to try everything I can; I want to push my boundaries and experiment with characters and genres that I have yet to try.

I go into the whole composer thing quite open to keep on going and keep on trying different things because you never know... the next idea you have might be the one.

We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.

Any creative process is about being in a territory which isn't secure, isn't necessarily familiar, and isn't convenient in any sort of way. And that's the excitement of it.

Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.

You've gotta dive into the abyss if you wanna get anything good. Every record, you've gotta go down in the abyss and hope that you come out of it alive.

When I started 'Record Collection,' I had no idea that it would come out sounding the way that it did, and that's one of the best things about the creative process, taking turns with the things you didn't know.

Creatively I just enjoy challenging myself in different genres.

I want to be scared. I want to keep taking insane risks. I want to be scared because you're going to grow through that whether you want to or not. I don't want to play the same guy. I want to keep throwing curveballs to you guys and keep telling stories.