Effortless Execution Quotes

The trick to any profession is making it look easy.

Do you know how some people can do anything?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, you tell them to write a tune, they give you a symphony right there. You tell them to write a book, they write you a novel in a day. You tell them to move a spoon without touching it, they move it. If they want something, they make it happen. Miracles, almost.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

I no longer do a film for the wrong reasons. I have to be convinced ethically and morally. Both the director and I have to be on the same page. There are just five songs in most films these days, and they have to be amazing. There has to be a twist in the screenplay. The editing has to be crisp. Your hard work should show, but effortlessly.

I guess the way I describe it is when basketball players talk about being in the zone and they feel like they can't miss. That's the way a running back feels when the game is in slow-motion. It feels like every cut is right, every run is going to be at least 10 yards. You see what the defense is doing. You know what they're trying to do to you. It's awesome.

...if I can do it, it's not art.

You might have asked [about skill] of an artist or a musician or whatever... but with me it just happens.

To me, skating should look effortless even when you're doing the hardest of elements.

Whenever I am on camera or doing anything on mic, I don't have any process at all. I just do it and, when I'm finished, it goes away. There is no process. I wish there were some techniques to it. I just turn it on and off, and then I go home.

Somebody doing something effortlessly is a lovely thing to watch.

Effortless [performance] and improvisation are two different things. Just because it's improvised doesn't mean it's effortless and just because it's effortless doesn't necessarily mean it's improvised.

People who are really efficient seem to do things easily, with a minimum of effort. In doing so they release maximum power.

In piano, if you try to force hitting this key and that key, it's very broken. It's not pretty. When you're in archery, you can't try to force it step-by-step-by-step. Then the shot doesn't flow and it's not a good shot. If you just let the performance flow, it's really beautiful.

When you do any job well, it looks very natural.

Just as most of us prefer to watch a trapeze artist work without a net, we like to be absolutely sure that a virtuoso is giving us our money's worth, and a seemingly effortless performance, no matter how spectacular it may be, deprives us of that slightly sadistic thrill.

Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.

It is very difficult to make the ideas in my head come to life, but what is harder is making them look effortless.

Basically we're puppeteers and if you're there and you're in the character, the puppet is going to look good. It's going to breath life and I think once they find out how to trust this system, you just forget about it and just perform, then it's just second nature, it just becomes easy.

One of the few greatest satisfactions of this life is to handle problems efficiently and well.

You know that when you suggest something on the page, it's going to be there, plus more. It's a great luxury to know that you don't have to push it. You just lay it out, and it will be there.

Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and ‘natural’ as opposed to self-conscious and studied.