A Quote by Elvis Costello
I'd be very suspicious of anybody that seems to have to move to the next level of expression. I distrust that: now I'm writing a book, now I'm being an actor. It should be a natural thing. I think it's a natural thing for you to act. But I think that people that feel that, because they've written one maybe quite beautiful love song that equips them to play Romeo, is probably misguided.
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To me, when one is writing sometimes about a very specific subject with very specific people, I feel like if that story doesn't cross over, it's not working. That's very beautiful to me, to be sitting in Berlin and there's an actor reading my book in German. I don't even know what's going on, except I know to feel my own rhythms in another language and say, "If this is going well, I think everyone should laugh around now." Then maybe there's laughter, and for me, it reminds me of how story can move around the world.
I think the big thing would be maybe the death of my brother. That was the hardest thing for me to take. It was very tough because that's natural and he saw a certain potential and he would say, don't ever have a drink. Now, I don't carry that far with people. I never had a drink.
Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.
There is a false moral imperative that seems to be all-around us that treatment of depression, the medications and so on, are an artifice, and that it's not natural. And I think that's very misguided. It would be natural for people's teeth to fall out, but there is nobody militating against toothpaste, at least not in my circles.
I think there is a natural thing that you feel when you've written something taboo because you just don't want to expose the people you're close to.
But I think writing should be a bit of a struggle. We're not writing things that are going to change the world in big ways. We're writing things that might make people think about people a little bit, but we're not that important. I think a lot of writers think we are incredibly important. I don't feel like that about my fiction. I feel like it's quite a selfish thing at heart. I want to tell a story. I want someone to listen to me. And I love that, but I don't think I deserve the moon on a stick because I do that.
There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.
I'm possibly a very morbid person but I think about death a lot. I don't know if it's maybe from being on films that's often playing Harry [Potter] or I just think it's a natural thing that I have. It's something that I think about just because it's fascinating in a very alien kind of way.
I think theatre is a democratic act and I think writing a play is not a democratic act. I think we should give writers more leeway and space to write the thing they want to write, and then we should produce the play, multiple times, and let them re-write it.
Formerly it was the fashion to preach the natural; now it is the ideal. People too often forget that these things are profoundly compatible; that in a beautiful work of imagination the natural should be ideal, and the ideal natural.
Not everybody should be laughing at everything at the same time. That's not even natural. My thing is to feel natural, because I don't want to feel like I could just make people laugh at every single joke, every single time, with the same decibel level.
I think, when people so strongly associate an actor with a character they play - but the main feeling is I feel very happy that I've been able to play somebody that people connect so strongly to. That's overall a very good feeling. There's the sweet and the sour, I guess. It does sting a little bit. Your insecurity as an actor maybe seeps in, but ultimately I think it's a very lovely thing. It doesn't happen that often. It's mostly good, I'm fine with it.
Love is the only thing that makes the world spin around, I think. It's weird. We have to call it "love," because we have to call it something, but it's not a word. It's an energy. It's an act. It's an action. It's a natural thing.
In general, a writer would like to think that the best book that he has written is the book that he is writing, and the next book will be even better. Maybe if this is not true, it is very useful to keep the illusion alive.
I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.
I'm one of those actors who's just standing there, waiting and ready for something to come my way. I don't really try to think about, "Oh, I feel the next thing I should do should be a feature. Now, I think I should do a play." I just hope someone wants to cast me in something.
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