Joel Edgerton Quotes

I'm always drawn to writing things that feel like uncharted territory.

This sounds really craven on some level, but on some level, a lot of what I'm doing is trying to not do a typical TV show.

It's intimidating any time to have a piece of art that someone else created, and that person says, 'Let's see what you created based on what I created.'

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.

Probably 90 percent of the stuff I make has inevitably been done before... Whether it's playing Hamlet, which has been on the go for 400 years, or pieces from the cinematic world that also have been essayed before, I feel released by that.

I look at people like Picasso and Da Vinci and Escher and Miles Davis, and they'll write or paint that one definitive masterpiece of maybe 50 that they have that's really trying to go outside the box, trying to do something that's tough. And then when you accomplish it, you look back and go, 'Yeeaaaah - masterpiece.'

There was a lot of great writing couples, but I try to do it all myself. And it was practically impossible, but I still managed to be ahead of my time.

Most artists try to avoid cliches, but it's pretty hard to avoid them if you yourself end up being one.

I love people who break boundaries and always create something new and fresh.

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.

It's so important to me that I feel like I'm doing something that's never been done before, whether that's in the show, or I'm writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it.

The issue of doing an adaptation of a book is the theater of the mind, and so you always face that.

It's fun to see how other artists adapt my work.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

The thing I'm most proud of about - not all of our movies, but a lot of our movies - is that you might love 'em, you might hate 'em, but most of the time, they're trying to be different or trying new things, which I think is really important.

I always like to get a role where I think, 'Ah, I know this is probably going to be played like this, but I'm going to do it like this.'

I think it's always a challenge to adapt a beautiful literary work into a fresh and alive film.

Life is short. Don't do the same thing everyone else is doing - that's such a herd mentality. And don't do something that's two percent better than the other person. Do something that changes the world.

Creativity has got to have some edge to it, doesn't it?

Just finding ways to be not provocative for provocative's sake, but to show an idea that hasn't been shown before, I mean that's interesting to me.

I don't want to come in and do something that's been done before. You know, for me, it's not that I wouldn't come in and do a sequel to something, but it's only if I can bring something new to the table and I'm not following an extremely strict path.

If people respect us as artists, they know we'll give them something different every time; they know we're pushing ourselves.

I feel that one thing that a businessman can learn is do not follow a path that has already been successful. You will never be a path-breaker then.

It's important to do something outside the box, and maybe that'll inspire people do also do something outside the box.