Robert Bresson Quotes

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

I know my choices will be creative so long as I follow my heart.

But I've always tried to make the best of fear, then, because without fears there's no art.

When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive.

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've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

I like taking a path into new country, and I always take the darker path. Not because it's dark, but because there's a secret there that you can share when you get out. That's what I liked as a kid. That's how I approach my work. With a face like mine, it's lucky I have a heart that likes that.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.

All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.

Inspiration comes from everywhere: books, art, people on the street. It is an interior process for me.

I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I think that's the way I was thinking. But my actual experience is that the best way to find out what the structure is, is by writing the play out laterally. You just have got to be brave enough to start without knowing where you are going.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

It is quite amazing how hard the subconscious works when it is made to understand that this life is not a rehearsal, there is no safety net and no assurance of any final closure. It is also quite appalling to realize how catatonic the imagination can become when we hedge our bets, opt for the safer direction at every fork in the path.

You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.

The best thing for an actor is to try it his way. The way they do it may not work, but it may inspire me to try something else.

As a child I prayed that my calling be revealed - but not with expectation and not with a destination. I became an artist because I didn't know what to do and I thought it was really fun to make things.

The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears.

Directing is like meeting a woman. You don't know her, but something strikes you, and then you just have to go into it.

When I was on that boat, I realized the only way I would feel creatively challenged was if I totally changed everything about my environment and put myself in a storm, in a sense.

What I would say to filmmakers, if I may be so bold or so arrogant, is to draw inspiration from other filmmakers, but go to the place in your own gut where everything is nothing. That's a very Zen thing to say, but that place of nothing is where real creativity comes out of.

Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is.

Fear of the unknown is a great creative partner.

We don't always know what we're doing. We often just get excited, put something down, and say, 'Oh, neat'.

You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.

I now know that inspirations must come from everywhere.