Steven Knight Quotes

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful.

I never imagined myself doing a one-man show. If I'm going to do one, I'd rather do one that breaks all the rules.

I like surprising myself. I don't want to do the norm, do what I'm always known to do, write how I like to write.

Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms.

I'm trying to do different music, and I'm trying to be out of the box.

Defying genre conventions is instantly a risky move.

We do things differently. You don't have to worry about being part of a particular genre. You just go for it.

I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despite the conventional in anything, even the arts. I paint canvasses on the floor and drove one art teacher out of his mind. But that's just the way I paint best.

I'd rather take risks than make something that's cookie cutter.

I think you don't do work for controversy alone, and whenever you do new work which people don't understand and they say it is done to create controversy.

I take chances. I don't limit myself. I don't think anybody who listens to Boston would have predicted hearing a female rapper on the beginning of the song 'Sail Away.' But that's what fit.

I do strive to find projects that are trying to carve out some new space. I enjoy projects that leap away from the crowd a little bit.

I want to surprise people and do different things and maybe do something that's not quite financially rewarding.

The movies that will truly be successful will feel different than the movies of the year before.

Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.

I think anytime you can do something you haven't seen or done in a film before, it's always a great day as an actor.

Artists rarely do the same thing over and over again. Art is about the new, doing things in a new way.

I was ready to get out of the box and play something a little different than what everybody has seen.

There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.

If you want to be in the world I live in, which is a creative world with new ideas, then you've got to get away from the norm. You've got to go for it.

My standards are based on shows I like, like 'Girls' or 'Arrested Development.' And they're all shows that are groundbreaking. I guess in the back of my head, I think, If you're not being groundbreaking, then what are you doing? If you're not being ballsy and honest and vulgar, then what are you doing?

The innovator, however, must in the first place be discontented, he must doubt the value of what he is doing or question the accepted ways of doing it. And secondly, he must be prepared to take fresh paths, to venture into fields where he is by no means expert. This is true, at least, of major forms of innovation; they make it possible for other men to be expert, but are not themselves forms of expertise

I always like to do something different, something unusual, stray off the path a bit.

The thing I'm most proud of about - not all of our movies, but a lot of our movies - is that you might love 'em, you might hate 'em, but most of the time, they're trying to be different or trying new things, which I think is really important.

I find that I'm quite experimental. I'm drawn to the brighter and weirder things.