A Quote by Laurel Nakadate

I won't look it in the eye. As soon as I do, I get scared. You gotta walk the plank at some point, but at first you gotta put blinders on or you'll overthink things. I think it's dangerous, by the way, to do a lot of talks about your art, to do so much talking and so little making. You get the wrong idea about yourself.
When you come into a pre-existing situation, you gotta have your own thing going. You gotta be really strong about it, and you gotta look at the older material in an aggressive way - 'I'm gonna make this mine somehow.' You need to put your imprint on the situation that you're in.
You gotta grow, you gotta learn by your mistakes; You gotta die a little everyday just to try to stay awake; When you believe there's no mountain you can climb; And if you get it wrong you'll get it right next time, next time.
What I think is important about essayists, about the essay as opposed to a lot of personal writing is that the material has to be presented in a processed way. I'm just not interested in writing, "Hey, this is what happened to me today." You get to a place that has very little to do with your personal experience and talks about some larger idea or something in the culture. I don't think you can get to that unless you have had a lot of time to gestate and maybe if I was taking a lot of notes while stuff was going on, I wouldn't be able to get to that place as easily.
There comes a point in the game where you gotta make a play or you gotta do something to get your team over the hump, and when that time comes you gotta be able to do it.
In a great horror movie, you've gotta have some character development and you've gotta set some of your people up and you've gotta have a little back story going. You've gotta take that time for exposition.
To be critically acclaimed, to get a Grammy, to be on MTV, you gotta talk about current events. You gotta talk about controversy, just stuff people want to hear. At the same time, you gotta get a message across.
Talking about the fact that I get depressed or that I've had some suicidal issues in my life is not easy. I don't know of many comedians who are going all in on that. In some sense, I think I've maybe sacrificed some momentum doing that. In another sense, I'm in a place where if I can talk about that and if it helps some kid in a way that gives them some help that wasn't available to me when I was a kid, then I gotta do that. Put being a good person first. If you have a platform, use it for stuff that's noble and good and worth putting out in the world.
Sometimes you gotta get stupid with yourself, and you gotta enjoy your own company some time.
My dad taught me very early in life that whenever a child learns to walk, he falls a lot of times, but then he picks himself up and learns to walk like a man, and that is something which is a motto in life as well. You gotta pick yourself up, and you gotta walk, and you gotta walk strong.
I think the point of art is to be controversial in a lot of ways. It's to cause conversations, and it's to get people excited about and talking about the things that the films are about.
I think that a lot of the time, we get in our own heads and make up what other people are thinking, but no one actually cares about the thing you think they care about. You just gotta take that weight off your shoulders and be nice to yourself and be yourself. People will fall in love with who that is.
I think you've gotta believe in yourself, I think you gotta put in a lot of work off the court to make sure you're ready.
I have my writing therapy. For me, writing and friends therapy is an internal journey where you go in deep, you reflect, you try to heal your inner child. But as an activist, there's the outward, going wide therapy, where you get to realize at a certain point that talking about yourself gets boring. And it's also unhealthy to be so much into yourself. At some point, you have got to be able to look at the issue and say, "It's not about you. It's about a culture, a people, a nation, a family."
I look at it this way: How much of the day are you awake? You think, "I've gotta get that dry cleaning, I gotta get this going, and this, and this, and this." And all of a sudden it's dinnertime. And then there's a moment of connection with your spouse or your friends. Then you read and go to bed. Wake up and then it's the same all over. You're not awake, you're not living, you're not experiencing. We start early medicating ourselves. We start kids early, on TV and video games and so on.
Sometimes we gotta be brave even when we're scared. We gotta not let being scared keep us from thinkin' straight. That's all brave is, boy, when you come right down to it, not lettin' the fear get you so turned around you start doin' stupid things, instead of what you know you ought to do.
I had to realize that you can't try to get money, support yourself, and grind doing whatchu need to do at the same time. The music is the grind. You really gotta grind. You gotta find your way around. You can't be stuck tryna get there.
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