Daily Inspiration Quote by Neil Jordan

Neil Jordan frames his creative choices as a deliberate turn toward difference, a refusal to repeat himself even when repetition might be safer. The phrasing is telling: I think, I often choose. It is not a rigid credo but a habit of mind, an instinct for veering into new territory. That instinct tracks with his career. An Irish novelist turned filmmaker, he has slipped from fairy-tale horror to urban noir, from intimate psychological dramas to historical epics and lush Gothic romance. After the surprise and controversy of The Crying Game, he moved to the opulent, studio-backed Interview with the Vampire, then to the political sweep of Michael Collins, and later to the savage, hallucinatory The Butcher Boy and the tender, whimsical Ondine. Each project resets the terms.

Such shifts resist the industrys pressure to brand an artist. Success invites imitation of oneself; audiences, financiers, and even friends can become a chorus urging more of the same. Jordan implies that creative vitality asks for the opposite. Doing what is quite different forces new problems, new tones, and new structures. It keeps the work alive to surprise and risk. There is also a thematic echo: many of his films are about identity as a mutable performance, masks worn and shed under historical or personal pressure. The movement across genres mirrors that fluidity. Rather than claim a single voice, he treats voice as a range.

The line also carries a quiet humility. Choosing difference does not guarantee greatness. It guarantees uncertainty and the chance of failure. Yet for an artist who writes as well as directs, difference is a way of returning to the beginner state where craft must be re-earned. That choice guards against complacency and keeps curiosity at the center. Jordan suggests that a career can be a sequence of goodbyes to what has already been mastered, with each new work asking for an unfamiliar way of seeing.