People like to build their own story about my life. I don't know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.
The truth is, for however much my stories come out of things that have happened to me, they're not darkly or as deeply personal as someone like Marc Maron or a lot of comedians, but they are essentially my life and my interpretation of it.
In 'A Boy's Own Story' and 'Jack Holmes and His Friend,' my idea was to take someone totally different from my real self and, at the same time, to assign to him my own life trajectory.
Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences.
Every story about me is so heavy and dramatic. That's not how I do life. But that's the impression people have, and that's what keeps getting reiterated. As if I'm still stuck in all the muck of the past. And I am so not.
If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for the Negro, I would be thankful the rest of my life.
I'd always heard stories about how Harpo Marx was the most talkative of the Marx brothers. I found it interesting that someone you never got to hear speak in films would never not speak in real life.
Every life of a character is within a context. If I write detached from a social and political background, my story looks like a soap opera where everybody is indoors, not working and living off their emotions.
Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.
These few dollars you lose here today are going to buy you stories to tell your children and great-grandchildren. This could be one of the big moments in your life; don't make it your last!
From the sense of being an ambassador for Jesus Christ, hopefully, through my story and through all the improbables and the miracles that happened in my life, people are inspired or at least a little bit warmer to the idea of exploring who Jesus is.
Anytime you share life stories with other people, you know, you are acknowledging their humanity and kind of accessing some things about yourself, and other people start to expect things about themselves. It's kind of like a fellowship.
'Confessions of a Video Vixen' is not a book about my encounters with celebrities, or anyone else for that matter. It is my life story, thus far, which just so happens to include some people you may have heard of.
Storytelling is my currency. It's my only worth. The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out.
I've made music for grownups most of my life as a singer/songwriter - often with my band, Nine Stories - recorded many albums, and 10 years ago I started recording kid's music, too.
I love hearing other people's stories, and I freely admit I'm scavenging for material through their conversations, but really, at the same time, I'm living an ordinary life.
You don't reach points in life at which everything is sorted out for us. I believe in endings that should suggest our stories always continue.
There's a rumor that there may be an attempt at organizing a possible script for a series on my life, which, when you look at my police record, you'd have to have more than one hour to tell the story.
I think when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say... well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar.
I can't tell stories to save my life. I like to have fun, and I go out and have a lot of fun. But I'm not really an entertainer that way. I'm much more shy.
I have never sold my story, done 'Hello!' magazine, any of that stuff. I'm not guilty of exploiting my private life for cash and then saying, 'Oh, I don't want to talk about my private life.' I've never crossed that line.
