A Quote by Glenn Greenwald
The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked - really, forced - difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one's own assumptions, often without quick or clear resolution.
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I watch a lot of crime shows. The head investigator always said to the crime solver, "What do you say?" And inevitably the other has to say something like, "Well I'm thinking he was shot in the neck with a certain gun and he seemed to be running." The solver has to picture what he's seeing first, and then express his own observations. The writer does the same.
I will say only that all a writer has to work with is the material he has gathered as the result of his own endeavor and observations, and he cannot be denied the right to use it. Condemn, but not deny.
It's often difficult to get perspective on your own stories, on your own experiences, without talking them through with someone who is genuinely interested in thinking about them. And that's the key.
We all press buttons in relationships, in our dealings with people, without thinking what it really means. We all knock along without questioning what kind of situation we're in. We may often be in a very good one, but we don't even appreciate the good situations. We're lazy. Or we're scared. Or we just don't notice.
I'm a situational writer. You give me a situation, like a writer gets in a car crash, breaks his leg, is kidnapped by his number-one fan, and is kept in a cabin and forced to write a book - everything else springs from there. You really don't have to work once you've had the idea. All you have to do is kind of take dictation from something inside.
For me, every book is a journey - questioning a really difficult topic that most people don't want to talk about, much less write about. And that's what I need; that works for me as a writer.
I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes about my relationship with my own body.
When people asked me, 'What are you going to do?' I'd say, 'I'm going to be an actor,' without really thinking about it. And I started acting without really thinking about it. I only thought about it properly a bit later.
If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.
No man can fight his way to the top and stay at the top without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination, resolution. Every man who gets anywhere does so because he has first firmly resolved to progress in the world and then has enough stick-to-it-tiveness to transform his resolution into reality. Without resolution, no man can win any worthwhile place among his fellow men.
We have a tendency to make assumptions about everything! The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking-we take it personally-then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison in our word. That is why whenever we make assumptions, we're asking for problems. We make assumptions, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.
The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice; a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.
I don't often get angered by the things press spokespeople say. Most of these people have difficult jobs and are often forced to be the public faces of policies they had nothing to do with creating.
And did you have to hack his arms off?” “Yes, I did. He wouldn’t go through the door.” “You say it like you’re proud of it." I was proud of it. It was an example of quick thinking in a difficult situation.
For me, filmmaking is not about making statements but about exposing human behavior so people are eager enough to start thinking on their own and make their own assumptions.
Negotiating the adolescent stage is neither quick nor easy. . . . I have often said to parents, "If it isn't illegal, immoral, orfattening, give it your blessing." We do much better . . . if we find and support all the places we can appropriately say yes, and say only the no's that really matter.
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