Mitchell Hurwitz Quotes

I mean my point as an artist is I'm on my own little weird journey across the sky here and whether or not anybody's listening, or listening to the degree I would like them to, at the end of the day has to be an inconsequential thing because I can't chase this culture.

I've never worried about what audiences would accept or had a game plan regarding the career. I never had an idea of how I should look to my fans or anybody else.

To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, 'Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.'

If you're trying to do something different, you can't ask someone to help, because they'll want to make it not different.

If you're an original thinker, you are going get told 'no' a lot, and you have to be able to hear 'no' many times from the bankers and trust that at some point, someone is going to recognize that you are an artist and not a can of soda.

You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else.

John Waters has certainly gotten to a place in his life where he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do. He's always been that way, but at this point, he's greatly respected for it.

The BBC knew I was successful from early on, but they weren't sure why, and they still aren't sure. What I do has been unconventional from the beginning, so they've never been sure. It just works. It just does.

I'm not going to release something just because they think it's the next hit. It's not what everyone wants to hear, but that's the way it is.

If you look at somebody like Sam Bee, she got to create her own thing without any expectations that there was a show there. That was probably liberating for them.

If I go out there and am myself, and I do what makes me comfortable and what I think is true to my artistry, and they don't like it, then that's fine. I walk off stage, and I know there's nothing there's nothing I could have done differently.

I can only do music if I can do it the way I can do it.

All of my films have been very hard to understand at the script stage because they're very different. At the time I did them they were not conventional. The executives could only think in terms of what they'd already seen. It's hard for them to think in terms of what has never been done before.

When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

The joy of art is particularly sweet, though, because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It's precisely the high-wire act of "this might not work" that makes original art worth doing.

Hollywood people don't want to be embarrassed by being involved with someone who isn't happening and cool at the time. But I never made the movies for the critics; I've done the best I could with the material and the directors and the actors I had. But the thing that's really exciting is that once I do that one project that's different, that stands out, everyone's gonna be watching.

Do the things that make perfect sense to you, [and] don't be afraid to shout it from the mountain tops just because it's outside the box or against the grain in your industry. More often than not, you're probably going to be right.

The only people who get paid what they're worth are people who don't follow the instruction book, who create art, who are innovative, who work without a map.

That's the artist's role - to strike out always for something new, to break away, to defy, to... grapple with the unfamiliar.

Creativity requires quite a lot of faith - not just in yourself but also in the knowledge that you have the right to proceed, even when you may not know exactly what you're doing.

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.

An artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to please.

I remember running into Aaron's Sorkin office and going "The show's West Wing going to work! I know it's going to work!" And it was literally that moment: the energy, the place, the feel. I didn't know the show would be successful but I thought it was going to be good and I don't have that feeling very often. And we were rehearsing all of that not knowing who the President of the United States was!

I would say Colin Jost is Kanye West because he takes like the creative risk a lot of times, whereas I'm like, "Uh, I don't know..."

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.