I think it's hard for any parent to see anything negative said or done against your child and, when you can't directly do something about it, it's hard.
He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.' 'All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,' he said. 'And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.' 'What's so negative about it?' I said. 'What could be a more negative word than "futility"?' he said. '"Ignorance,"' I said.
Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.
My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative, and it's hard to listen. I remember one day, I said to her, 'It's October 1 today,' and she said, 'I know, isn't it dreadful?' It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.
My son's dad is committed, and involved, and amazing. We're actually really good friends. But I think it's dangerous to speak negatively to the child about your ex or the absent parent, because, believe it or not, they learn very quickly who the other parent is. And it's important that they develop their own attitudes and opinions about that other parent based on their experiences, not based on what someone has said about them.
You think you're prepared. You think you've done everything you're supposed to, study hard, work hard, keep yourself out of trouble, and then-whoosh! Something arrives out of the blue that you never saw coming. Something you never even imagined. Something that'll knock your little world off its axis. Something that'll either change your life for the better, or end it forever. Chaos.
You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.
I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.
It's very hard to impose your beliefs or a specific message about any given movie. I think that audiences always extract what they want from a film even if something isn't overtly political. They may or may not get it, and it's hard to control that.
Being a family member is hard no matter where you are. It's hard to be a kid. It's hard to be a parent. It's hard to be a brother or sister. It takes patience and kindness and forbearance.
It's very hard to be objective about something you're in, especially when you set it up against things that you experienced as a child.
I think anything created today can be said to be a ripoff. It's hard to find anything original any more.
Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes. THAT is cyberpunk.
If, during childhood, you were fortunate to have a parent who drilled into you, 'You can be anything you want to be if you try hard enough at it,' and then supported you in actions, that is something you take with you all your life.
If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?
When you're starving or wrapped up in a cycle of binge-ing-and-purging, or sexually obsessed with (someone), it is very hard to think about anything else, very hard to see the larger picture of options that is your life, very hard to consider what else you might need or want or fear were you not so intently focused on one crushing passion. I sat in my room every night, with rare exceptions, for three and a half years.
It's important for a parent to learn to take delight in a child whose behavior might seem mystifying. In the case of an extroverted parent with an introverted child, it can be learning to see the inner riches of your child that may not always be expressed on the surface - but are there.