No matter what you or anyone else does, there will be someone who says that there's something bad about it. Whenever somebody comes up with a good idea, there's somebody else who has never had a good idea in his life who stands up and says, "Oh, you can't do that..."

Nobody who ever accomplished anything big or new or worth raising a celebratory fist in the air did it from their comfort zone. They risked ridicule and failure and sometimes even death.

I don’t think you can create anything interesting from a comfort zone. You have to work from a place of fear and failure.

It's good to be out of your comfort zone. Just don't step out of your gift zone.

The other thing is, as we grew up, people had a way of making us feel uncomfortable when they saw us using imagination. When we came up with new ideas they were often greeted with smears or sarcastic laughter or comments such as that’s a crazy idea. It won’t work. It’s never been done before, or we always do it this way and so on. These are idea killers. And, I’m sure you’ve heard them and many, many more. They stifle creativity. Sometimes, too often really, we use them on others. But even worse, we use them on ourselves. We actually kill our own ideas before they’re given a chance to prove themselves one way or the other.

The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination.

Good ideas can go bad because they’re made for the wrong reasons. The mission isn’t the right mission. Even though all the players may be noble players, the mission itself is fundamentally flawed.

No one wants to see cool people doing brilliantly. I want to see the struggle. That's the fun bit.

I used to have to get my courage up to offer my ideas to David Lean, but that improved as time went on. He used to say to me, "That’s a ridiculous idea, I’ve never heard of such a thing." And I would feel awful. But then he would come up to me a day or two later and say, "You know that idea you had, it's not exactly that but it's close.” It was always worth putting up the ideas. I'm not crushed if they don't want to use them, it's a point of view.

But I do nothing that I don't like, such as "inventing" up to the arty or "down" to the corny. I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the "let's be artistic" attitude. I know that artistry just happens.

It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny.

I have learned that particularly clever ideas do not always stand up under close scrutiny.

The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination

There’s nothing more dangerous than a good idea.