Elif Batuman Quotes

There's no such thing as a cautious creative.

There's a real cowardice in the movie business. If you don't meet the right crazy people, you can't do it.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail

The most successful people in the world are the ones who thought of that idea that was 'too crazy to work.'

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

If you stick with a vision, it might not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius. To me, 15 minutes worth of absolute genius in a film is so much better than two hours of mediocrity. I would rather pay to see something different like that.

I'd like to just be a little bit more open to making mistakes and not worrying about it so much.

There's a lot of risk in putting what you suspect you really are into your music.

You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.

In Silicon Valley, if you spend a lot of time thinking about the obstacles, you'll talk yourself out of everything, because the more you look at it, the less logical something sounds, since no one has done it yet.

If you do things, whether it's acting or music or painting, do it without fear - that's my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there's nothing to lose.

I love Lady Gaga. She's not afraid to take risks and be herself.

I'm an artist, and I like the risk - I'm not in it for the sure things.

The older I get, for me it's about fear. If I read something and it scares the hell out of me, that's what I want to do. If it's a challenge and a massive risk and I'm going out on a limb ... those are the ones I want. And they are few and far between. I don't work very much because I'm very specific about what I want to do.

Every artist is unreasonable, because he or she is doing something that hasn't been done before.

The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.

For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.

We have to take risks with art. If we don't, it all becomes a bit boring.

Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

I don't want to get myself in trouble - and I don't think I'm super important or anything - but I think it's so funny that when you look at the business and the way that people make decisions in their lives, whether they're in art or music or they're in industry, they forget that being unique is the answer.

I do what I feel is right. I am not scared to walk on the new path and take risk.

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!