Joe Swanberg Quotes

You can't rush inspiration.

Whenever I finish a movie, I usually go through a period where I think I'll never have another idea. And then, somehow, you get another idea.

When I'm looking for an idea, I'll do anything--clean the closet, mow the lawn, work in the garden.

"Where do you get your ideas?" That's the one question I'm genuinely sick of being asked, and also genuinely fascinated by. What fascinates me is not that people ask the question, but what kind of answer are they really looking for? Because if I tell them the truth, which is "I make them up," they seem very disappointed. They want to know about the trek I do once a year to the mountain.

I'm strictly a one-project-at-a-time kind of guy. If I came up with a compelling idea for a different book while working on a project, I'd probably abandon the first project and go with the new idea.

I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

The toughest question has always been, "How do you get your ideas?" How do you answer that? It's like asking runners how they run, or singers how they sing. They just do it!

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'

I pick up inspiration from everywhere and it all manages to keep stored in my brain somewhere.

I almost literally wake up in the morning starting to think of my next idea. It's almost always driven by what's in the news. The hard part, really, is getting from knowing what I want to say to figuring out how to say it in an image. I'm still not entirely sure how to explain how that happens... Suddenly, something just works.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

I have more of a vivid imagination than I have talent. I cook up ideas. It's just a characteristic.

In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.

I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.

Anytime I have an idea, I'll make sure that I put it down so that when we do sit down to write an album, I don't have to dream it all out of thin air. I don't have to be creative on the spur of the moment, or spontaneously artistic. I just take advantage of whenever creativity strikes.

You don't actually have ideas; ideas have you.

I'm not very prolific. I'm not good at sitting down as an artist and saying 'Okay, I need to put in my four hours today.'

As I get on and films take four years to complete, I tend to have a hankering for very short projects so you can move on to the next idea. It's the ideas I'm interested in. What comes out of your head.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

People ask me, 'What's your next film?' And I never know.

Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

I don't know where the ideas come from, and it's terrifying. They seem to be absolute flukes. When I was in my 20s, I'd walk around with a notebook all the time and make sure I wrote down anything that occurred to me. Now I'm just hoping that some sort of event will descend on me.

Many people say some of their best ideas come from dreams. Arguably the greatest Beatles song, 'Yesterday,' came to Paul McCartney in a dream.

When you open your mind up, and you go into a creative state, you can't just switch if off. When you have an idea, a creative impulse, and then you ignore it, it can keep you up when you just want to go to your bed - which is why it's great to have voice recorders on your phone!