Mark Ronson Quotes

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

Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

If the playwright knew every little thing about his play, why bother? There must be discovery all the time, otherwise why bother to do it?

We have no general conceptual thrust for the band, other than trying to make music that keeps our interest. When things are novel, they are probably things we have discovered by accident or investigation rather than by design.

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.

The fun for me musically is that you never quite know what works and why. So why pretend you do? Why not just put things together and discover, in the creative process, if and why they work? That approach has served me well.

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

When you work with an actor and then you discover new things that are better, I think you gotta be free to be able to go with the new things that you're finding. I think that's very important. I have a strong idea when I go to shoot a movie but I also love to discover things when I'm on set as well.

I tell the actors that the biggest gift they can give me is to fail. And that the second gift they can give me is to surprise me.

The best thing that I got was rehearsing with my father. It was always about the process of figuring things out, and trying something new, and having another take on something and keeping it alive.

And as I've gotten deeper into the process of making films and television and such, I think I have more trust in the fact that you really never know what you're going to find after the twenty-fifth take.

I don't think I would have made 'Blank Project; if I hadn't made 'Cherry Thing.' I think that was a real rebirth in a way, and a remembrance of how I like to make music best, the most. Like being in a more chaotic place, maybe. Like a place of making and being creative where the mistakes can be left in.

You never know what an artist is going to create next.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

When we made that album with Gary Moore, I was still kind of searching for the right direction for myself. Although the music is quite good the direction was like a box of fireworks that caught light all at the same time.

I think what's so great about making your first feature film is that you're so naive in some ways; you don't know what to expect, and you don't question things as much because you're just trying to figure it out as you go.

I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

I'm obsessed with giving the audience something they don't see coming.

With Fincher, you can take chances and try things. And what happens is that any pretension and preparation you've done, all the square, intellectual work, you can't keep that up for 40 takes. It breaks down, and new things start popping up. This, for me, is the most exciting thing about film-making.

I think if you speak to any creative person, there's something so powerful - so intoxicating, if you will - about discovering another voice, another instrument, another way of looking at things, another way of perceiving things.

Shooting should not be about delivering something I've prepared; it should be a live process of finding things out. When things happen that you haven't planned, that's when the film comes alive.

I have no idea where I want to go musically, but I'm fine that way. I don't need to be faithful to any concept, you know.

The music always takes us to different places. We'll just continue to play and see what doors open from there.

We storyboard a lot, but I love when we are just going in there and just, almost on the fly, making stuff and discovering moments. It's just fantastic, where you can really go in there and be creative and everything.