John Quotes

I do a lot of improvising on movies, actually.

It's kind of liberating to be able to bring your own ideas to things, but it's also a lot of pressure, it's like screenwriting on your feet.

I think just getting a movie done is an accomplishment in itself.

I'm not a huge sports fan in general, I don't spend a lot of time watching other people do stuff. I tend to like to go out and do stuff myself.

It's true that the skills required to be a conman are the same as those required for being an actor. Though those skills are in the service of something a bit more noble with acting, I hope.

To me, it doesn't make any sense to pick your work based on the size of the budget of the movie.

Unless you do the same thing, it's tough for stereotypes to stick. That said, whatever you've done that's most popular at a given moment is what people think "you do."

I'm not of the manor born; I've never felt entitled in that way. I just came to Hollywood to be an actor. All that lifestyle stuff is something to be managed.

I always say it takes as much preparation and thought to do a small part as a leading part. In some ways, leads are easier because you have the luxury of time to discover the character.

For a while I had a blues band in L.A., but I realized I was too optimistic to play the blues. I did not have the misery in my heart that the blues required.

I don't deliberately go into comedy or go into indies, but I do deliberately try to keep changing tact, because I think that is the key to longevity in a career.

Life is often confusing and sad, and I'm a big fan of the slap and the tickle, as they say.

The kind of über-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, "Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny."

I'm bored by repeating myself, and I would imagine that an audience would be bored by me repeating myself.

A wasteland is a confrontation to a man of stature: an empty place, a gauntlet thrown down in challenge and defiance. A place like that cries out to be conquered and civilised.

If Vulcans had a church, they’d be Catholics.

The future did not arrive.

I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.

Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?

Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.

My work became an exploration of non-intention.

One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.

To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.

Beware of losing what isn't in your head.

If you don't have enough time to accomplish something, consider the work finished once it's begun.

...we make our lives by what we love.

I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.

An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he'll arrive before death overtakes him.

In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.

In an utter emptiness anything can take place.

Nothing more than nothing can be said.

The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.

There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent to a gang bent on destruction.

Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.

Everything I see is something I haven't memorized.

We only hear what we listen for.

The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.

Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.

The truth is that everything causes everything else. We do not speak therefore of one thing causing another. There are no secrets. It's just we thought they said dead when they said bread.

Everything we do is music." (Classical Composer)(From: 4'33")

Each moment presents what happens.

Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do.

One need not fear for the future of music.

One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, 'This end is more important than the other.' After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink.

A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.

I don't need sound to talk to me.

Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.

As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.

We are simple-minded enough to think that if we were saying something we would use words. We are rather doing something. The meaning of what we do is determined by each one who sees and hears it.

You can feel an emotion; just don't think that it's so important.