The key thing is that you start every film from sort of a blank page, almost like you discover it like a child discovers a new world.
[President Jimmy Carter] had so much going for him. He was elected without any real commitments.... To come in with no commitments gives a President a marvelous, broad flexible horizon of operation.
One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.
The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.
I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.
As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don't learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.
Be an empty page, untouched by words.
A white wall is the paper of a foole.
I routinely interview college students, mostly from top schools, and I notice that their brains are like old maps, with lots of blank spaces for the uncharted terrain. It's not that they lack for motivation or IQ. It's that they can't connect the dots when they don't know where the dots are in the first place.
I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.
When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.
When absolutes are abandoned for principles, the U.S. Constitution becomes a blank slate for anyone’s graffiti.
It was a place without a single feature of the space-time matrix that he knew. It was a place where nothing yet had happened - an utter emptiness. There was neither light nor dark: there was nothing here but emptiness.
All I have to do is keep my spirit, feelings and conscience like a sheet of blank paper, and let the Spirit and power of God write upon it what He pleases. When He writes, I will read; but if I read before He writes, I am very likely to be wrong
The color white is the absence of memory.
It's funny, because you want to make it different, but when I start building a character I do the same thing with each of them, which is start with a blank canvas. It's like painting a picture.
Nothing can come of nothing.
I think of a child's mind as a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly.
An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.
(Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born.
The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.
You know... that a blank wall is an apalling thing to look at... The wall of a museum - a canvas - a piece of film - or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something - that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you.
Twitter is an astounding platform for information, but it's a total blank slate - which means it's an astounding platform for disinformation, too.
As a composer, every project begins with either a blank sequence or a blank manuscript and for the first couple of days you cover and experience every emotion under the sun. Fear being the main one.
Sometimes the best experiences are when I know nothing about this movie: I've never met the director, and I come and see something and I'm blank, because then it's coming at you in a way it would never come at you if you'd read the script, with an expectation.
