Your best ideas, those eureka moments that turn the world upside down, seldom come when you're juggling emails, rushing to meet the 5 P.M. deadline or straining to make your voice heard in a high-stress meeting. They come when you're walking the dog, soaking in the bath or swinging in a hammock.
So once I thought of the villain with a sense of humor, I began to think of a name and the name "the Joker" immediately came to mind. There was the association with the Joker in the deck of cards, and I probably yelled literally, 'Eureka!' because I knew I had the name and the image at the same time.
Creativity and insight almost always involve an experience of acute pattern recognition: the eureka moment in which we perceive the interconnection between disparate concepts or ideas to reveal something new.
There are occasionally eureka moments - off the top of my head, maybe Darth Vader's theme, you know, the imperial march.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
People think of these eureka moments and my feeling is that they tend to be little things, a little realisation and then a little realisation built on that.
Work grows out of other work, and there are very few eureka moments.
With 'Taxi Driver,' I had this eureka moment. I realized that acting could be much more than what I had been doing. I had to build a character that wasn't me.
'The Office' is clearly the funniest show on TV. But I can't live without watching 'Eureka.' It's my favorite show of all time, and I watch it constantly on my iPod.
Eureka! - I have found it!