William Fichtner Quotes

The problem is that once I start on a song and get a rough idea of where I might go with an arrangement, I try dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different things on a song. The bass, the backing guitars, the lead guitars, the keyboards. It's a long process. It's like 100 steps forward and 99 steps back.

Good and bad ideas both come from the same fountain of speculation and experiment.

My idea of artistry has always been 'try everything until you find out what works.'

You try a lot of things and you don't know what the hell you're doing. If you're actually inventing something you shouldn't know what you're doing.

If you don't know how it works, find out. If you're not sure if it will work, try it. If it doesn't make sense, play with it until it does. If it's not broken, break it. If it might not be true, find out.

I think a lot of what you do in acting, and for the most part singing and dancing and everything, is trial and error. It's all about just seeing what works, and if it does, to use it, and if not, to throw it away.

I'm one of those actors who likes to do it wrong nine ways before I come to the tenth way, which is the way I think it should be.

I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.

I have ideas that I think might be amusing, and I try them, and if they look right, I carry them out, and if they don't, I throw them out and try something else. I don't agonize about it.

Lots of comics try stuff out all year round, which is very sensible - I don't.

Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem.

Most intuitive ideas have to be clarified, so there is a trial and error process.

There is something about a theatre room that is really like a laboratory for trying things and failing, because you have time to do that, and you can explore something deeply and discard it if it's not working.

Part of being the successful Pixar is that we will take risks on teams and ideas, and some of them won't work out. We only lose from this if we don't respond to the failures. If we respond, and we think it through and figure out how to move ahead, then we're learning from it. That's what Pixar is.

A lot of what we do in the studio on a day-to-day basis is you try to cast a line as far out as you can out into unknown waters and reel it back in, cut out stuff that isn't working, cut out stuff that isn't connecting to people.

When you're first starting a show, any show, you learn what works and what doesn't work, and it's a kind of trial and error thing.

Sometimes I do that quite a lot, go back and forth a lot between ideas. Try things out.

I think the philosophy will continue to be what it always was; which was, let's keep throwing a bunch of things at the wall, and see what sticks.

Half of art is accident, but there is no accident without free experiment.

All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.

Don't be afraid to stumble. Any inventor will tell you that you don't follow a plan far before you strike a snag. If, out of 100 ideas you get one that works, it's enough.

You just want to try a bunch of stuff, because you don't know what's going to be great.

People try new things all the time. By now, the people who succeed have to be very sophisticated.

When you feel you have good although incomplete expertise, start trying things. If it's not working, try something else; maintain an experimental mindset.

If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.