I don't think my work is so much about opening up wounds. I think it's about understanding the nature of the wound. I'm not bleeding on the canvas. I, like most people, have suffered traumatic events. The character of a person's life is determined by the way they deal with those events. I am a creative person and I deal with it creatively.
Nature has a way of deadening us to traumatic events, until we're ready to deal with it. And once you do, it's a volcanic reaction.
You who have suffered so much do not want to be with the kind of person who makes "black widow" jokes to deal with an uncomfortable, painful moment. You should be with a person capable of great compassion and understanding.
I think we need to make documentaries about fantasy and storytelling. I think I just started to scratch the surface of a method that allows us to do that. We want to be sucked into the events, suspend our disbelief and imagine that this is a fiction, but actually putting onscreen the gap between who the people are and who they want to be and therefore opening the question about why they want to be this person.
It's to come up with a deal that both sides feel they can live with. And I think that that's probably where we're going to end up. I think that Donald Trump has people working for him who are ultimately deal-makers. And the Canadians are the same way. They're grownups about this. That's why you saw the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau not respond to Trump with the same rhetoric, but to talk about the strength of the relationship and the desire for a deal.
When I am working on a painting, everything that I am thinking about at the time - be it current events, the books I am reading, personal events, influences, emotions, etc. - all find their way into my work.
One posthumous measure of a person's life is how often you imagine his impossible return to deal with some event he never lived to encounter. You picture his reactions, his advice, his sage commentary and humorous asides. For instance, I think about Mark Twain's hypothetical take on current events several times a week.
I think of events like the Challenger and 9/11 - events that move us so much that we never quite get over them. So it's important to go back and relive those feelings in order to remember how important those events were to us.
In physics we deal with states of affairs much simpler than those of psychology and yet we again and again learn that our task is not to investigate the essence of things-we do not at all know what this would mean&mash;but to develop those concepts that allow us to speak with each other about the events of nature in a fruitful manner.
Writing about traumatic events in your life is actually much harder than being there the first time round because you have to relive all those moments and you know what the outcome is.
The belief in the probability of death with dignity is our, and society’s, attempt to deal with the reality of what is all too frequently a series of destructive events that involve by their very nature the disintegration of the dying person’s humanity. I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.
I think, in general, this country makes a huge deal about nudity and not a big enough deal about violence. We're allowed to cut people's heads off on shows - but not allowed to show breasts or somebody breastfeeding or whatever. I think it's a big deal in America especially. But I think to each is own.
Honestly, I spend very little time thinking about past events, and I certainly don't have them ranked in any way. I look back and think that I have done a lot of good work over the years, but I am much more excited about what the future holds.
I think [Iranian deal] was the worst deal I've ever seen negotiated. The deal that was made by the [Barack] Obama administration. I think it's a shame that we've had a deal like that and that we had to sign a deal like that and there was no reason to do it and if you're going to do it, have a good deal.
In fiction, you don't invent the events. What is imaginative about it is the consciousness: how you think about the events and how you present them. And that changes the nature of everything, and that is the attraction of writing fiction.
I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.
I have learned that some of the nicest people you'll ever meet are those who have suffered a traumatic event or loss. I admire them for their strength, but most especially for their life gratitude - a gift often taken for granted by the average person in society.