I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?
I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn't think I'd have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn't know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.
There's good movies and there's bad movies. The genres are never dead, it's just about how to apply them and articulate them and execute them - the story, the quality of the writing, the acting, the design elements, the directorial execution - all th...
Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world wo...
My three years at the NIH were critical in my scientific education. I learned an immense amount about the research process: developing assays, purifying macromolecules, documenting a discovery by many approaches, and writing clear manuscripts describ...
I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it's equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people.
Some of the young kids look for one hit to be a star; that what they're known for the rest of their life... I never wanted to be known as one thing; that is the reason I do classical theater, write, direct and the blessings God has given me... I want...
When I sit down to write a novel, I am exploring my own relationship with God, with the struggle between good and evil, my own purpose.
Keep your mouth shut and see what's happening around you. Don't finish people's sentences for them. Don't just hear what they say, but also how they behave while they're saying it. That was great training for writing.
One of the tricks to writing great plays is to get people in a room together and not let them leave. You want the tension to escalate. Keeping them there is the hardest part, so you have to take away any excuse for them to leave.
It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.
I have great ideas, but the follow through is always really difficult for me. As my kid gets a little bit older, if I feel like I have a little bit more time on my hands, I'd like to get more into developing ideas and writing things.
'Lovelace' was really great. I got to work with the wonderful Amanda Seyfried, Hank Azaria and Peter Sarsgaard, so it can't get no better than that, right? I had a blast, and the film is a very, very well put together movie - from the director to the...
In my time since moving to the United States, I've found that there is a dearth of great writing for black people. There are stories that depict us in a way that isn't cliched or niche, and that a white person, a Chinese person, an Indian person can ...
I know a lot of writers who would much rather be writing the Great American Novel, but they've got bills to pay and alimony, and so they take a job at a less-than-reputable paper. You know, you do what you gotta do.
As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their w...
I've lived a lot since I was 16, so I've got more things to write about. I've started playing around the world and met some great people along the way who've taught me lots of things.
When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing somethin...
When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.
There's a personal story of my own that I will write at some point, and it's a film that I will happily make. It could very well be the next thing I do, unless someone shows me something great.
Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.
