As artists, we are so not in control most of the time of the content or the narrative of our characters, and sometimes writing takes a turn and it's not something we necessarily have control over. It's just a lot of random dumb luck, so when things click, you've just got to enjoy it.
Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.
Years and years ago, I was obsessed with these Pamela Love necklaces, and they had a claw, like an eagle claw, which was silver. Then I found one on this random website. I thought it was a fake claw, and when it arrived, it was a real one, cut off from the animal! It came to my house, and it was disgusting; it was a chicken claw or something.
Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
I get inspiration from movies, from fashion, then completely random things you'd never think of.
I'll do anything that sparks me. Sometimes I'll want to do something random with ballet, and then I'll want to be a hippie caterpillar in an animation film. Who knows what will come my way, but I'm going to try and put little hints into the universe, and hopefully they'll float on by.
The visa lottery system poses a national security threat. Under the program, each successful applicant is chosen at random and given the status of permanent resident based on pure luck.
Take a random selection of photographs of America in 2012 and 2002 and 1992 and, except for the skinny jeans and the porkpie hats, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the years in which the pictures were taken.
Occasionally, chewing over some random letter writer's dilemma, I'll find myself imagining scenarios where the problem could be sidestepped by an innocent fib or series of evasive manoeuvres. Then, I slap myself on the wrist.
Around 10:30 or 11, I'll make poached eggs and maybe some Brussels sprouts - kind of random, but delicious. Sometimes I'll do bacon. I've been on a more fat/protein diet with fewer carbs and less saturated stuff, which has actually been feeling really good.
I think that, you know, looking at all the systems that I've been studying over the last several years, that paper ballots with a precinct optical scan counters and random audits is the best system that we can have.
Random people, celebrities of note come to your shows over the years, and I've had some really strange ones. Like the guy from Kiss. Gene Simmons has literally been in the audience at my shows, like, four times. I don't know if he knows me; he's just a big fan of comedy.
I've gone up to a random guy in a grocery store before and said, 'Hi, I think you're cute. Are you single?' I'm not smooth. I just put it out there.
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
When I get bored, I'll zone out, and I'll just sit in front of my computer and start writing any random song that comes to mind.
An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, Internet memes are altered deliberately by human creativity. There is no attempt at accuracy of copying, as with genes - and as with memes in their original version.
The payoffs in showbiz seemed as random as a slot machine.
I'm a random guy. I shake a hand and make a friend. I don't do egotistical things.
I love to sing random stuff. That's exciting for me.
It used to be if you wanted something nice to wear, you would sew it yourself for your body type. Women before the 20th century didn't have this problem. Now, it seems we're all squeezed into random designs. They're designed for no one.
I've gone on Twitter, and I've seen a picture of me walking through the airport, or some random picture, and the person's like, 'Oh my God. I just saw Chilli.' They just take a picture, and it lets people know where you are. It's just crazy to me even when people do that.
Old women especially are invisible. I have been to parties where no one knows who I am, so I am ignored until I introduce myself to someone picked at random. Immediately, word gets round, and I am surrounded by people who tell me they are my biggest fans.
I'm quite a rational person, but I'm drawn to the irrational. I love coincidences, and I like to question that in fiction: 'Is this random, or is there something working underneath?'
My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have been my gravest reportorial offense during the early years of reporting. When I discuss the book with students, they often ask me how I could 'stand by' in the face of so much suffering; the egregiousness wasn't my powerlessness but my surprise.
My style is unique and random. But I think it's important that it still makes sense.
Sometimes in my class I have people come in and do monologues inspired by people they know and I always find that to be useful to do specifics about somebody and then you're actually doing a character and not doing some random old lady or something.
I follow the most random people on Twitter. I follow famous people like Khloe Kardashian, who surprisingly makes really funny tweets all the time.
Films like 'Velvet Goldmine' are an accumulation of research and references. I create an almost random resource of connections and am constantly distilling that into narrative specifics.
Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it's not random.
I have a Woody Allen Jewish attitude to life: that it's all going to be disastrous. That it hasn't all been that way is simply down to some random quirk of fate.
For one person, organized files might be a crucial tool for creativity; another person finds inspiration in random juxtapositions.
None of us wants to be reminded that dementia is random, relentless, and frighteningly common.
'At Random' ran on Saturday nights for as long as the conversation was still lively. Sometimes, I'd finish way after midnight, then hop a plane for whatever city I was working a football game that Sunday.
Engineering serendipity is this idea that we can help people come across unexpected but helpful connections at a better than random rate. And in some ways it's based on trying to reassess this notion of serendipitous as lucky - to think of serendipitous as smart.
An object imbued with intent - it has power, it's treasure, we're drawn to it. An object devoid of intent - it's random, it's imitative, it repels us. It's like a piece of junk mail to be thrown away.
The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no matter how apparently random.