Unexpected Inspiration Quotes

You need messiness and magic, serendipity and insanity. Creativity comes from time off, and time out.

I was writing "Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was.

Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.

The muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited.

It's so funny when you're actually directing because things start popping that you don't expect to pop, and something that you think is going to pop, maybe doesn't quite have the impetus that you thought it might.

Creativity is a continual surprise.

Everyone finds my work super sad. I never do. I always find it uplifting in a weird way.

My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.

If you work diligently... without saying to yourself beforehand, 'I want to make this or that,' if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.

A blown-out tube ripped some of the grind from the amplifier, throwing us into a momentary tizzy. The unusual sound led me to play unusually, and the recorded take turned out to be a keeper. Insriration can come from the most unlikely places ... keep your head on and your ears open.

Sometimes I do an automatic songs, songs that you don't really think about, or work on. You just look back and it sorta surprises you.

I never know when somebody's going to knock on the door of my own unconscious in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.

It's one of those things that hits you when you're not even looking for it. It's a moment when you find those words surging through your mind - "I feel so alive right now." There's varying degrees of it. Acting definitely makes me feel so remarkably alive. Sitting on a beach or walking through nature makes me come alive always.

To some extent, I'm mildly surprised by every new piece, by the precise path that my interest takes.

I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.

Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who's going to have a great idea.

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop… suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.

I'm a sucker for a funny script. And then, as soon as I don't wanna be, one comes along and grabs me.

It is surprising how many people who don't read believe they have a book in them. Why? Nobody would imagine that Alfred Brendel took up the piano on a whim at 25 when he found accountancy unpleasant.

The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.

What happened was I saw this ad for a yogurt plant for sale. It was in my junk mail pile, and I threw it into the garbage can. And then about half an hour later, with the dirt on it, I picked it up from the garbage can, and I called out of curiosity.

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about.