A Quote by Kevin Smith
I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.
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I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment.
In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing. It makes sense. But I had always admired filmmakers who made movies that didn't sound like them at all.
The weirdest thing I've been fascinated with nowadays is the new contemporary country music, which to me sounds like very strange '70s pop, and sometimes like rock music. But some of the themes in there - maybe it's because I know how the songs were written, but it really does sound like it was written by two or three people, with the idea to appeal to the most general audience.
I'm not a huge social media kind of guy, so I don't really know, I don't really ever get... at least in real life, I really don't get recognized. I think people seem to find it very difficult to connect me to characters I've played.
I always, at least back then, struggled with emotion in writing. I felt like I could do odd, unusual things, but there wouldn't be enough feeling in them, and maybe if there's a progression at all to anything that I've done it's that I've always wanted to have a high - an almost overwhelming - degree of feeling in what I write.
I remember when I was maybe 27 years old and kind of at the height of my movie stardom - it was around the time of the Oscar and this and that. I think I was very much believing my own hype, which how could you not? I was sitting with my dad, feeling great about my life and everything that was happening, and he was like, "You know, you're getting a little weird...You're kind of an asshole." And I was like, "What the hell?" I was totally devastated. But it turned out to be basically the best thing that ever happened to me.
Anything good that I have written has, at some point during its composition, left me feeling uneasy and afraid. It has seemed, for a moment at least, to put me at risk.
I don't know if you've ever seen some of the Sidney Lumet movies, like Dog Day Afternoon [1975] or Network [1976]. They're real events that happen in real time, and there are all of these different characters experiencing the same thing in different parts of the movie ... I am so bad at explaining my films. But it's in the world of finance and the world of media, and how they connect. It was a big undertaking. A big, mainstream movie, which stars Julia Roberts and George Clooney. But for me, it's really just a small story about character and people.
There's a difference between writing, the written word, and music. When you have the blank page it doesn't make a sound, which is like what happens to me every night when I'm playing. There is that crazy moment: the first mark you make on the page. But sound can inspire sound, in a way that words can't inspire words - at least for me. The nature of sound itself is still a huge mystery to me. I'm very happy about that.
I think real humans are so complicated, and often [characters] are written more one-dimensional without maybe even the writer knowing it. I've felt numerous moments in my life where my most confident moment and my most insecure moment were exactly the same time. There's nothing funny or interesting about perfection.
I think the thing is that you're very affected by your early life, and I think that if you ever had that feeling of outsider, or loneliness or whatever, it just doesn't leave you. You can be happy and successful, whatever, but I think that thing stays inside of you. It doesn't ever really leave you. You kind of always will have that.
The one thing that I've always kind of had, ever since I was a kid, was that I lack a certain degree of self-consciousness, which is alternately good and bad.
A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.
I don't think there are any songs that I've written in the past that I now disagree. It's kind of like tattoos; I would never regret a tattoo, because it was how I felt at that time in my life. I don't think I've ever said anything that I would take back. So far, so good! I would probably change the music, or change how I sing it, maybe do it a little bit cooler, or a bit more grown-up. But I don't think that there are any lyrics that I regret.
Real life is a funny thing, you know. In real life, saying the right thing at the right moment is beyond crucial. So crucial, in fact, that most of us start to hesitate, for fear of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. But lately what I've begun to fear more that that is letting the moment pass without saying anything. I think most of us fear reaching the end of our life, and looking back, regretting the moments we didn't speak up. When we didn't say "I love you." When we should've said "I'm Sorry." When we didn't stand up for ourselves or some one who needed help.
Maybe I'm the prophet of hip hop for real. Maybe I do come with some kind of divine principle behind me, because I know that every battle I've ever had I've always won.
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