Ryan North Quotes

In life, a lot of great ideas sound insane or absurd at first.

I'm against fashionable thinking.

Creativity shouldn't be following radio; it should be the other way around.

Don't listen to the prevailing majority points of view. If you have new ideas, push them.

More or less, I am always saying, 'Let's do what has not been done.'

Life is short. Don't do the same thing everyone else is doing - that's such a herd mentality. And don't do something that's two percent better than the other person. Do something that changes the world.

If I start playing by the rules, I will inhibit myself of the possibilities that lie beyond. I don't like to be framed or given borders to operate in or curtail my thought process and as a writer it's not only my choice but also my need to go beyond the given framework.

Most innovative things are not obvious to other people at the time. You have to believe in yourself. If you've got a good idea, follow it even though others tell you it's not.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

Creativity is not and never has been sensible.

If you're trying to do something different, you can't ask someone to help, because they'll want to make it not different.

My respect for artists is very high. I think to get the most out of them, you have to liberate them. I think part of liberating them is saying, 'Come up with something brilliant, new, and fresh. Stop thinking based on what has been beat into you by executives or publishers in terms of what's going to work and what's not. Don't react, just act.'

I encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt.

I'm all about zagging when everyone else is zigging.

I've always enjoyed doing challenging things and also challenging common wisdom.

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.

My strength as a TV writer was my total lack of interest in television.

To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason.

These are ideas. I could say that they just came to me, but it would be more accurate to say that I went to them. Ideas - and new connections between ideas - lead you away from commonly held perceptions of reality. Ideas lead you out here. Ideas lead you into the darkness.

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.

To me, unconventional thinking is approaching a problem and asking, 'Why not? Why can't something be done?' If someone can't give me a good reason why you can't do something, I find a way to do it.

Like most creative people I don't fit well into boxes.

There's no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist.

I've come to realize that most good ideas are precisely the ones you can't describe.

You gotta stick your neck out and put out a record that isn't safe... that's the Green Day way!