Artistic Surprise Quotes

Writing the record for me - every record is almost a surprise. When people ask me, what are the themes you want to grapple with on this one? I have no idea until the record's finished.

While it may be a really trying, weird time for the art world, I see good work all the time. If you just go around to that many galleries, and if you stay open, you're going to see work with enough energy and surprise. I don't think I've ever gone to the galleries without coming home thinking, Gee, I now know something I didn't know this morning.

Most of the time, when I had hits as a soloist - maybe not so much with Simon & Garfunkel - I was surprised they were hits. I didn't know what the hits were. I never thought that 'Loves Me Like A Rock' was going to be a hit, or 'Mother And Child Reunion,' or '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.' They didn't sound like what the hits sounded like at the time. Radio was more open to things that weren't exactly what every other hit was.

Hopefully, the people that would look at a Good Charlotte record and dismiss it for maybe what they think is a certain kind of content, if they do discover something meaningful, then it's a nice surprise. I like those kinds of contradictions.

When I sit down to write a scene, I have a plan in mind, and I'm thrilled when a character disregards my goals and takes the story to a place I hadn't imagined.

I'm one of those artists that nobody ever sees coming. We started with Virgin in 1993. If you look at the climate of that time in reggae and you were to pick the top five people that'd have a shot at having mainstream success, I was nowhere in that equation at all.

There are so many different points to 'Wild World,' and it sounds quite different to what people would expect from us.

A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art: that they shall excite or surprise us is indispensable.

I know a lot of people weren't expecting 'BLACKSummers'Night' to be what it was, just like a lot of people weren't expecting 'Embrya' to be what it was. People will listen to what I've been a part of and see what I've done.

So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

We've all had that moment, the first time you're exposed to live theater, and it's shocking in the best possible way. You see something and say to yourself, 'I didn't know this could exist.'

In terms of the music, it feels almost like trouble's a good thing - you never know when a song is going to surprise you. We look for these subversive moments in songs.

I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.

A nice blend of prediction and surprise seem to be at the heart of the best art.

What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

In a way, 'Mamma Mia!' was such a left-field thing for me.

You have to be aware of what the audience's expectations are, and then you have to pervert them, basically, and hit them upside the head from a direction they weren't looking.

The whole point of being an actor is to get satisfaction out of a role - unless you're just vain about celebrity. You're always looking for the one thing that will surprise you.

When you get a poem [in a public place], it happens to you so suddenly that you don't have time to deploy your anti-poetry deflector shields that were installed in high school.

I offer originality: you don't know what my films are like until you go to them. I think that's the reason I've been getting all this attention.

I never could have predicted that I would have done something that could be called portraiture.

I saw 'Annie Hall' with a group of people working in comedy and television. We were all stunned. Stunned. It was like watching a spaceship land. That something that funny could also be that beautiful.

Whatever precautions you take so the photograph will look like this or that, there comes a moment when the photograph surprises you. It is the other's gaze that wins out and decides.

I've been attracted to imagery and occasionally I've drawn from it, but I never thought I'd be painting these paintings. I didn't have any desire to. I didn't think there was any reason to.