A Quote by Jay Neugeboren
I remain curious about all the lives I can't have - and about the lives of others, real and imagined, past and present, and how people came to be who they are... and who they might yet be. I am enchanted by the landscape of possibility.
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As youth lives in the future, so the adult lives in the past: No one rightly knows how to live in the present.
In fiction, I exercise my nosiness. I am as curious as my cats, and indeed that has led to trouble often enough and used up several of my nine lives. I am an avid listener. I am fascinated by other people's lives, the choices they make and how that works out through time, what they have done and left undone, what they tell me and what they keep secret and silent, what they lie about and what they confess, what they are proud of and what shames them, what they hope for and what they fear. The source of my fiction is the desire to understand people and their choices through time.
Historically it has been a touchy subject, especially in the south where I am from, people don't really talk about it. If they do talk about it, it is often talked about negatively. Nowadays in light of the Black Lives Matter movement I think people should pay attention to these lives also. I think the Black community will really embrace the film [Moonlight]. It is about us. It is real.
I might have been curious about actors' lives when I was growing up. That's human nature.
We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better.... or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do.... But at this precise moment, you also realize that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it's Eternity.... It isn't what you did in the past the will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.
I'm always thinking about time. That's one of themes I return to in my work, the way the past bears on the present, the way that time is not linear, and how that expresses itself in people's everyday lives.
How those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the shadow of the seagull vanished without a trace. Was it the end of a season, the end of a life? Was it so long ago it seems it might never have been? What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and longs for the past? (from "No Words Can Describe It")
Looking back, I've always enjoyed hearing about the lives of other people, their experience through their jobs, their lives, and their children. It's always been a treat to hear about others.
Many people allow their need for other people's approval to control their lives. They spend their lives worrying about what others think of them.
No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.
Think about it: No matter who you are, the past plays a large part in your life. I am all about living in the present as best as I can. Try as I might, there is only so much I am able to achieve on this front.
I am a nonbeliever myself. But I think there's so much about religion that is not factual in nature as to why people engage with it and what it means to them. You can debunk why you think there's no physical evidence for God and why the story of Jesus didn't really happen that way and stuff like that all the live-long day, and it's not going to make a difference to what role religion has in people's lives and how they feel about it and how it makes their lives better or worse.
One day they might. I accept that in the short term the consequences are terrible. No one minimises those and I'm not seeking to do so. But what I am saying is that this is a country that has been brutalised for decades by this appalling regime and that the restoration of that country to its own people, the possibility of their deciding their future... and indeed the way in which they go about thier lives, ultimately, yes, that will be a better place for people in Iraq.
There are very few films or plays or anything about really happy people with perfect lives. Everyone is usually screwed up in some way and that is usually where the work comes in - figuring out how to make it believable and make it real to present someone.
I've just always been interested in how people lead their lives. How they survive in this world. I'm curious about people's damage, and navigating that and the way people forgive. I find it really interesting. That's why we have to transform on a daily basis, work on ourselves. It's work.
Real stories - whether in pure fiction or historical - have a certain indefinable power; we are endlessly curious about the past and hungry for learning that we hope will illuminate the present.
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