Peter Max Quotes

I never have a plan of what I am going to draw.

I don't know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I'm at during a particular moment in time.

I still maintain the fact that when I write songs, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't think about it pragmatically. I say what's in my brain, and sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's terrible.

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

Most songs I write are spur-of-the-moment-type things. I have to be spontaneous. If not, songwriting can bore me. There is no pre-design or idea of what I am going to do when I go into the studio. It's all like that for me. I could go in and write two or three songs in an eight-hour session. You can't over-think songs. You just can't.

I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.

I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

I sometimes don't know what I'm writing when I start writing it, on some level.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

I don't know - it's a bit of a mystery of how things come about when they do. I don't have a scientific explanation for it. Sometimes when you're writing a song, you don't know where you're going.

In using chance operations, the mind is enriched.

You walk on a set, and you have no idea - that's why I don't storyboard. It's all possible.

The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.

Every time somebody asks me, 'Oh, when you mix your own music, what are you going to make?' And I don't know.

I'd listen to a song and say, 'Hang on, I like that piano thing,' so I'd play the guitar like that and get the vibe from it, and it just evolved from the get-go. It was pretty obvious what to do; You don't think about rock n' roll: you just do it.

I imagine that when I am creating a song or a project or an album or putting some clothing together or cooking a meal, whatever it is, I don't really have a recipe. The fun part is to throw that big piece of clay in the middle of the table as hard as I can, and whatever shape it takes, that's what shape it takes, and then I start to carve away.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making.

There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.

I Still Approach A Scene As One Would Approach A Guitar Solo. You Don't Exactly Know How You're Going To Phrase This Or That. Which I Think Is Beautiful. That Idea Of Chance.

The composer makes plans, music laughs.