Willem Dafoe Quotes

I don't use my brain about the creative thing. From a business standpoint, I instinctively do things: when I get something right, it's never because I use my brain.

I love being creative. I love acting, but I also love directing because you get to have a vision for the whole and bring that vision to fruition.

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

With the success of 'Spiderwick,' it's allowed me to be able to have the freedom to really be able to tell the stories that I really wanted to tell, that I've always wanted to tell.

I just kind of conjured them up out of my subconscious and put them in order of ascending peculiarity.

As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.

I think you always win in storytelling when you let the best creative ideas guide you.

I'm trying to do the kind of projects that I want to see in the theatre.

Things develop in front of my camera, and then I will try to do the best out of it. I am close, but in most of the scenes, I am trying not to be seen. I think that's the trick. I think it starts in your heart, goes to the head, and the head puts it into the finger.

But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

I often use hypothetical situations to generate information and imagery for paintings and to create a fictional space where a subject can be put into play.

Obviously, if a director doesn't communicative a clear, relevant vision of the material, it will not succeed no matter how good the material.

I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.'

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

Because even very young people are expert readers of pictures, you can convey very complex and subtle messages through pictures that you'd need loads of words to explain. Making a picture book is also a bit like making your own film - and you can make anything you want happen, however impossible!

I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.

I'd like to think that we strive in film and theatre to tell great stories, and I believe in the power of storytelling in our culture.

My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.

There are many ways to go about a story. And if you give yourself some formal constraints, it just makes the job so much - maybe 'easier' isn't the right word, but because you know your boundaries, you can just play within those boundaries much more, so it's much more fun to do.

I'm not in a race with anybody to make the biggest hit movie anymore. I am just trying to tell stories that I can stay interested in for the two years it takes me to supervise the writing and to direct them.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.

I love illustrating for other writers because I am given stories I never would have thought of, and my work as an illustrator is always in support of the story.

Sometimes the kids come up with better endings than the real story.