From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Even when I was 16, if you had asked me what I wanted most in the world – I would have said, '…to be able to do shows, and have people watch them.' Realistically, for my level of ability, talent and work-ethic, we expected about 200 people a night to come and see us.
Fundamentally, where creativity is concerned, people are trying to express an idea or solve a problem. This applies in business, the arts, or even solving family or societal problems.
To make a great movie, you cannot set out to make a great movie! Great films are authentic, they capture the zeitgeist of a time and place in an entertaining and engaging way. Great cinema becomes something that reflects the mood of the time.
I started writing fiction because I was lonely. I was an only child, a solitary child, raised by a single working mother, which was very unusual at the time in Turkey. Literature gave me a sense of continuity, coherence; it kept my pieces together. It helped me to connect even when I felt like I didn't quite belong.
We are born creative and often seek to transform our surroundings to suit our existence. Everything around us constantly changes and so creative options for adapting to this change become the only guarantee we have for a meaningful existence.
The camera doesn't lie, but the photographer does. And that's the beauty of it. Photography is about interpretation, it's about your point of view, it's about how you see the world.
In improvisation on instruments, I feel creation is going a new path with every note, somewhere you haven't been before. You discover things, you're the adventurer in music. That leads to new songs and nice adventures.
A film score is not a symphony, or can it be… when you compose for film, you are part of a larger storytelling structure made up of acting, direction, lighting, cinematography and much more. Collaborating on these projects is a puzzle-solving exercise where you- as a composer- are looking for those things that music can do which the other elements cannot.
I'm a firm believer that creativity comes from restrictions, so I'm really grateful that I grew-up with so many restrictions around me. When you give people limitations and say, 'here's a canvas, but you can only paint with yellow..' – the wheels start turning, and you plan to get out of the box you're put in.
I don't think of what I do solely as an expression of me and my life; it's more that I'm someone who loves what happens when a great song comes into my life. I become still. I see life as beautiful… majestic. I feel more like the song is doing something for me rather than me doing something to make the song… or to do to the song.
The classic 'lightbulb moment' is largely a myth. Remarkably, about half of these founders engaged in what we've termed a 'deliberate ideation process.' Intriguingly, they set out to establish a company with no specific idea in mind.
When the first real version of the game came to life on my screen—without any decorations, scoring, or anything, just the playing field and the pieces—I couldn't stop playing. I realized there was something truly magical about the game. But I could never have imagined what it would become; that was one of the biggest surprises.