Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.
I get a lot of inspiration from research in mythology and folklore. I find that, you know, stories people told each other thousands of years ago are still relevant now.
And there above all of these shops hung a blood soaked sign: a red hand, the hand of a child that was neither male nor female and yet roused feelings of the most dejected and criminal love
I was brought up by my mother and my two sisters, although they're older than me and fled the nest very young, so I was technically raised as an only child, but I was very much loved.
What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.
I said 'I was imagining you as a little boy, and as a teenager, and as an old man.' He said: 'I was looking at you and thinking how young you look, and how old at the same time.
Just as a child respects his father even when he perceives his weaknesses and faults, so a German will not despise the old Germany which was once a symbol of greatness to him.
I don't read anything about myself. As a child, there was something in me that was just instinctive. I want to be clear in my spirit, and I don't want to be blocked by things that get inside of you and kill you.
Make them imagine repentance more like an appearance in court before a cranky old judge, less like a child knocking on his father’s study door to have a chat.
My real self, the self I have always been from a child, is a loner and nerd, slightly overweight, with a very heavy fringe. That is who I was as a kid. I don't think I will ever be anything other than that.
Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things.
I was a very imaginative child, and my parents were very encouraging of that. My sister and I would put on plays; I would write my own stories.
A man with no children can easily be lulled into a sense that time is standing still. It's not. It's marching past us, relentlessly. Having a child growing and changing before your eyes makes this unavoidably clear.
I never really had that father figure to look up to. I think that's the reason I'm so ambitious. I felt like I wasn't appreciated as a child so I wanted to prove my worth as an adult, as an actor.
I worked for a while as a teaching assistant while I was struggling. I really enjoyed it, working with kids with special needs, autism. It takes a hell of a lot of concentration, and you've got to focus on the child properly for seven hours a day.
I think talking is as casual as blogging, and sometimes writing can be as casual as talking. My informal writing style is a political choice, because I want feminism to be more accessible.
Also the clothing, people often ask why I talk about what characters are wearing. And that's really important to me, because you have to have a picture of how people moved in their clothes.
Say a child raises this beautiful beet. It's going to give her a sense of ownership, and that changes everything. You stop taking things for granted; you become less wasteful.
Believe me I do understand and I am disgusted by the idea that we should aim for any less for a child from a poor background than a rich one.
My favorite part on 'Energy Fields,' at the end of the track is a little girl laughing, and to me, it's a child watching the world, her friends, and so-called grownup people, and the way they try to understand the world.
I wondered to what extent people remained the same as they'd been when very young; if one peeled back the layers of living one would come to the know child.
