A Quote by Pat Conroy
I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival.
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In 1987, I had no idea who Steven Isserlis was. We met at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. It was originally just an Italian summer festival, but for the past 14 years, there's also been a spring festival in America.
When movies first came out, maybe they were in black and white and there wasn't any sound and people were saying the theater is still the place to be. But now movies and theater have found their own place in the world. They are each legitimate art forms.
I'm inspired by playwrights, novelists, poets: The value of language has been a lifelong passion of mine. I enjoy it. I'm good at it.
I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I'm an English novelist; there are Scottish poets and Scottish novelists.
I was obsessed with movies when I was younger. During the summer, I would go by myself to a theater down the street from my house. I saw every comedy or science fiction movie that came out. My kids love going to the movies, but 3D scares them.
I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival.
I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.
But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.
I'm a person who likes these sort of movies... sad but moving 'art movies' that normally are at a festival and then they go to a small art house theater and disappear.
I think I belong to America's last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that.
Everyone loves the seventies because that's when movies were character-based, and you saw great characters and you saw very interesting filmmaking. There are interesting movies being made now, but it's harder and harder to make them.
People watch more documentaries too now. These movies that would normally be shown in these little art houses, and unless you walked by the theater, or happened to read that tiny zine that contained the info for it, or went to a film festival, you might miss it.
The first thing I did as a child was draw. I wanted to make animated movies. I think Disney's 'Cinderella' was the first movie I ever saw. 'Peter Pan' was the first movie I ever saw in the movie theater. I grew up with 'Dumbo' and 'Pinocchio' and 'Sword in the Stone.' Those were the movies I wanted to make.
Novelists have to love humanity to write anything worthwhile. Poets have to love themselves.
One of the things I always underscore when I teach criticism is that young critics, or would be critics, frequently have this illusion that if they write about music they're somehow part of music, or if they write about movies they're part of movies, or of they write about theater they're part of theater, or write about literature. Writing is a part of literature, we belong the species of literature. If you add all the music reviews together that have ever been written, they don't create two notes of music.
I always hated high-school shows and high-school movies, because they were always about the cool kids. It was always about dating and sex, and all the popular kids, and the good-looking kids. And the nerds were super-nerdy cartoons, with tape on their glasses. I never saw 'my people' portrayed accurately.
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