Willem de Kooning Quotes

No art ever came out of not risking your neck.

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

If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.

I think music needs danger; it needs risk.

It is not necessary to be too avant-garde, because you risk not being understood.

So there's kind of a simultaneous aspect to pushing the boundaries, and being very safe.

Designing is a lot like a high-wire act - if the tightrope walker is only six inches off the ground, where's the excitement?

You have to decide if you want something stable and safe or if you want to take a risk and go outside the formula and try something new. That's everything that dance embodies.

The edge is a great place to be. Inside the box is too dark. Outside the box, there's no leverage. But on the edge of the box, you can get things done!

If there was no risk, it wouldn't be art. It wouldn't be worth making. There is risk even in a fairy tale. Fiction is closest to pure narrative, and pure narrative is simply the logic we try to impose on an ever-changing reality.

Learn to live on the edge.

Great photography is always on the edge of failure.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

Making art is nothing but risk, always. If it's not risk, it's no good.

The hardest things to do in any art is to risk failure and put yourself out on the line.

I like pressure. If I am not on the edge of failure, I'm not being sufficiently challenged.

The creative process is also the most terrifying part because you don't know exactly what's going to happen or where it is going to lead. You don't know what new dangers and challenges you'll find. It takes an enormous amount of internal security to begin with the spirit of adventure, discovery, and creativity. Without doubt, you have to leave the comfort zone of base camp and confront an entirely new and unknown wilderness.

I always knew I wanted to create. I used to sit in my room for hours drawing and making things. I once got into trouble for cutting up my mother's lampshades to make a dress. I was three.

When that happens - when risk is taken and the filmmakers dive into the subject matter without a parachute - very often what you get it something with those qualities that make it age well with the public.

It's fun to be on the edge. I think you do your best work when you take chances, when you're not safe, when you're not in the middle of the road, at least for me, anyway.

You only do good work when you're taking risks and pushing yourself.

If you're playing within your capability, what's the point? If you're not pushing your own technique to its own limits with the risk that it might just crumble at any moment, then you're not really doing your job.

I'm not an artist, and I want to take risks, and when the possibility of failure occurs, it's because the idea is all exciting or interesting as a high wire act, and sometimes you've got to fall off, just by virtue of the fact that you're constantly trying to evolve and do new things.

Any creative process is about being in a territory which isn't secure, isn't necessarily familiar, and isn't convenient in any sort of way. And that's the excitement of it.

I do tend to apply myself to projects that make me uncomfortable because usually when that happens I try to find a way of existing in the project that is more creative.