Meredith Monk Quotes

Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.

Predictability is boring! I want a book to take me someplace I haven't been before, show me sights I haven't seen, make me ponder questions I may not have pondered before.

The unknown is always interesting.

When people go to the theater, they don't want to think 'I know exactly what I'm gonna get,' and then they get it and then they walk out. I think you want to walk in going 'I don't really know what this is about,' and have the fun of discovering it.

If there wasn't mystery, people wouldn't have anything to ponder. If you already knew everything, you wouldn't have anything to think about and life would just be really boring.

I like the unknown. That's what Terry Malick has always really liked. He's always looking for the unexpected.

I wondered how they would top the Pirates and skeletons and moonlight, because that's a pretty cool concept.

Savor the mystery, Stephen, we don't get enough of them.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

Once, the world was full of mysteries, some of them frightening, some of them wonderful, some of them merely fascinating. Now, it can be a banal and predictable place, the tracks of daily life so well-beaten and defined, our culture awash with the imbecile obvious, our existence suffocating in safety. But mysteries remain.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don't know what's going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don't know at all what you're going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you're a kid and you're reading stories.

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

Nothing much interested me other than playing with language and telling stories and doing something with the wonders of the world around me.

When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?

To me, science fiction is about the sense of mystery, the sense of awe. Not 'shock and awe', just 'awe.'

I quite like the element of surprise, and as much as I have my ideas, I always appreciate ideas that come from other people as well, and I love the mystery of not knowing.

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

When I start any book, I have no idea what I'm going to do.

We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.

Some people are fascinated by what they know, and some are fascinated by what they don't know. I'm just very interested in what's possible.

I think mystery... allows us time to dream.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

I'm always looking for the potential mystery in everything; I can't imagine writing about anything else.