Christian Marclay Quotes

Play is experimenting with chance.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.

The slightest thing can ruin a scene, but you must be willing to take chances.

I have a theory that the only original things we ever do are mistakes.

You have to be able to fail with the improv. You have to not care.

Life isn't a science. We make it up as we go.

Much of what we're going to try will not work, and much of what does work will do so for unanticipated reasons.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.

There's a certain amount of joy in playing a character in the moment and not knowing what's going to roll out as it goes on. It's a bit like life, in a way.

I just want to keep doing a bunch of stuff that I don't really plan. I'm so fortunate and lucky that people keep giving me these platforms. Because I'm kind of a crazy person.

No, I never planned my life.

If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

It often feels like a tremendous amount of work is required to get an idea moving forward, like pushing a train uphill. But at a certain point, the thing takes on its own momentum, and takes unexpected turns. So it's that feeling of holding on, rather than pushing it, that is the most exciting thing. It's that need to occasionally bounce off the walls, letting anything happen for any reason, and having nothing to guide you that is the joy.

Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.

Some people are very lucky, and have the story in their heads. I've never storyboarded anything. I like the idea of chance. What makes God laugh is people who make plans.

Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often. That's a consequence of exploration. Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing. That's what scientists do every day.

I love to play things that are out-of-the-box. It's just that I don't always get the chance to do it!

You can't plan everything - if I did a performance exactly how I rehearsed it, it would be so boring.

I'm not a trained chef, so I end up making stuff up. It either turns out brilliant or an absolute disaster. I just go for it.

At its best, life is completely unpredictable.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

Life is about making plans from which you deviate, almost always. If you are lucky, you do come up with a plan.

My methodology is not knowing what I'm doing and making that work for me.

I always leave room for serendipity and chance.

In 1965, I was teaching a seminar on freedom when I told my students that the ultimate freedom lay in casting a dice to decide what to do. They were so shocked and fascinated that I knew I had to write the book.