I knew David Lynch going to television was going to be something. It was either going to not work, nobody was going to get it and it would disappear, or it was going to be something special and really stand out.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
I've had great success being a total idiot.
I never felt like 'I'm an underground dude' or 'I can only be hot in New York.'
When I was seven and told my mom, 'I'm gonna be a writer,' she said, 'Oh, that's a terrible idea. You'll live in misery and die teaching other people's children badly.' My parents wanted the safer path for me, and I think they failed miserably achieving that.
I feel like I've cheated. I never knew what to do. I was never a good enough painter to earn a living, and so I drifted into the theatre, and I've had a successful life. I feel guilty that I've never done a day's work in my life!
I am continually embarrassed by people who point me out as an example of what can be done without training.
Top performers in their fields such as Debbie Moore, Jean-Christophe Novelli, Deborah Meaden and Jo Malone, did not go to university and are just a handful of the individuals who show that with drive and determination, you can succeed by treading your own path.
I've realised that if I aim for a successful record, I probably won't have any success. But if I keep making weird things, then hopefully the audiences will come to us.
Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.
My goal is not to make popular things. My goal is to make the things I love as popular as I can make them.
I'm really going off of watching John Waters speak one time and I remember he just kind of talked and it was totally interesting. I wanted to hear about his life and how he got started and when did he think he made it, stupid stuff like that. And what his relationship with the mainstream is because he's so far out there, but then he became part of the mainstream in this weird way. He was really funny, though. Yeah, I have to work on my jokes.
One does not succeed by sticking to convention.
I'm a gypsy: no education, no schooling, nothing. I don't care what people think of me. I don't care about being a hero, a role model, a champion.
If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
If you look at somebody like Sam Bee, she got to create her own thing without any expectations that there was a show there. That was probably liberating for them.
Every time a twenty-something CEO turns down a multibillion-dollar offer for a company that has little or no revenues, it hits a raw nerve in me. Unlike most professionals, I am not shocked by the seemingly bizarre behavior of those founders who pursue their vision beyond all rational thought or monetary reward.
I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.
I've been a guy that everyone has counted out over the years as an undersized four-man. I've always been doubted.
I was told I would never make it because I'm too short. Well, I'm still too short. It doesn't matter what your height is, it's what's in your heart.
Entrepreneurial knowledge has little to do with certified expertise, advanced degrees, or the learning of establishment schools. The fashionably educated and cultivated spurn the kind of fanatically focused learning commanded by the innovators. Wealth all too often comes from doing what other people consider insufferably boring or unendurably hard.
The disobedient child is continuously condemned. The obedient child is, on the other hand, continuously praised. But have you heard of any obedient child having become world-famous in any dimension of creativity? Have you heard of any obedient child who has attained the Nobel prize for anything - literature, peace, science? The obedient child becomes just the common crowd. All that is added to existence is added by the disobedient.
Actually, bizarrely, in America, I get more appreciation from the odd, unusual stuff I've done, almost because I'm not, if you like, famous in America as I am in England.
When we were making 'Arrested Development,' it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. You know, nobody was watching. We weren't getting feedback. The job wasn't paying very well. But the one thing I did feel confident about was: No one will ever be able to do this again. Because no one would be stupid enough to try.
I've lived long enough to know things go in and out of fashion, and things not well received now can be totally reversed years later.
