Rachel Joyce Quotes

In the startup world, you're either a genius or an idiot. You're never just an ordinary guy trying to get through the day.

I definitely like taking the dark horse approach and picking people you should not be getting behind, and you figure out a way to get behind them.

I really think the mind of someone who hasn't been welded into place by their work or studios or actors or this whole society is a wonderful mind to work with, so I'd like to do a big picture with an unknown director.

Caltech is a very adventurous place. Part of the culture is that we tolerate people doing things that seem impossible, and also synthesizing and borrowing ideas across very kooky and unusual boundaries.

Both my fathers are unconventional. They are like unicorns or wizards. They are musicians through and through. The way they think is just different.

I keep a band of great young people around me, and we're not musically restrained. It's not about 'Let's do it correct' but 'Let's do it right.'

Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.

I never thought very many people in the world were very much like John Laroche, but I realized more and more that he was only an extreme, not an aberration - that most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life.

Perhaps creativity is fumbling that dance step, or driving the chisel the wrong way into the stone.

Results are often obtained by impetuosity and daring which could never have been obtained by ordinary methods.

It was a crazy idea. But, as usual, that’s all Percy had.

My mother's influence to take on new challenges and do what I though was right even though sometimes the consequences politically speaking were not good. My mother was vivacious, she was full of life, she got up every morning looking forward to the day, trying to figure out what she could do that was innovative and unprecedented and maybe controversial.

Never let money get in the way of an idea

I have created a life by stepping out of the box of people's limitations. I call it zigging when others are zagging.

We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off.

You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary

Maybe the man had taken the wrong turning, but at least he'd travelled some extraordinary roads.

It's not reckless, because when we leap, when we dive in, when we begin, only begin, we bring our true nature to the project, we make it personal and urgent. And it's not abandon, not in the sense that we've abandoned our senses or our responsibility. In fact, abandoning the fear of fear that is holding us back is the single best way not to abandon the work, the pure execution of the work. Later, there's time to backpedal and water down. But right now, reckless please.

Don't listen to those who say, you taking too big a chance. Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today.

Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense.

It is so easy to be average. It takes a little something to be special. Why be around average?

It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.

I'm actually as common as mud. I'm not particularly well read, or bred. But the way I look... I seem to have this sort of 'aristocratic' demeanor.

I've always liked to go down a different path. Being a woman of color, I never followed a cookie cutter way.

Isadore [Duncan], who had an un-American genius for art, for organizing love, maternity, politics and pedagogy on a great personal scale, had also an un-American genius for grandeur.