Sidney Lumet Quotes

It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.

You've got to take what comes. You've got to make yourself available for everything; you've got to pray that you're in a position to do the jobs when they come around.

I always leave room for serendipity and chance.

I don't prepare to sit on the bench, I prepare to play because you never know what is going to happen.

Crazy things happen in this sport, and you have to be ready. And for me, luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

I've worked with collage a lot. And there's this chance thing that happens - you don't always control things. Why did you find this today and not this? But you've got this thing, and you make it work. It's the way life is, I suppose. Whatever happens, you deal with it.

I've never been a planner. I didn't know I was going to run for the State House. I didn't know I was going to run for governor. I don't know what's next, and I love not thinking about it because the doors open at a certain time.

Don't plan too hard, because something much better might be out there.

We can't plan life. All we can do is be available for it.

You never know what doors are going to open up and why they are going to open up. You've got to be ready to walk through them.

One of my great values that my father intuited, and indirectly taught me, is that you should always have a plan but be open to opportunity.

You don't know what's gonna happen, so you can't really plan: you can only go with it.

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.

Every day is different; you never know what to expect, and you have to be ready to pivot on a dime.

An actor can never plan. You never know what can work in your favour or not and then maybe the whole dynamics can change.

Sometimes it's good to be ready for the unpredictable. I'm glad that I can go through unpredictable situations. It's a good thing.

The main thing is to have strings to your bow. You get your badges, you see where life is, and then you see what things come your way, if any.

I am always living in the now, so I like what fate brings to you. That's always fun for me. To have a process and someone be like, 'How about this?' And you just grab onto that and see where it takes you.

I often don't know what I'll be working on next year or a year from now. There is often a chance meeting, or something that I worked on 10 years ago suddenly becomes important again.

Every time I thought I've seen every possible scenario, something else comes up. You just have to be prepared at every level.

The nature of improvisation is you don't know what's going to happen.

To embrace luck, you have to enhance your tolerance for ambiguity.

Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.

One never knows what each day is going to bring. The important thing is to be open and ready for it.

But chance runs like a river through all our lives, and being prepared for surprise is the best we can do.