My mom is always asking why can't I make something nice? Because I'll make paintings, say, and they're just really bloody and angsty. So I wrote 'Dark Parts' because I wanted to write something nice for her.
Any abhorrent behavior is more interesting to me. I'm always amazed when somebody asks me, 'Why don't you write something about nice people?' Because nice people are boring, that's why.
I mean, my wife is always like - I don't write lyrics. So I couldn't, like, really technically write a song for anyone. I could write a very nice instrumental. So she always sort of gives me a hard time because it's just such a ridiculously impossible standard to live up to, that your step-dad wrote that song for your mom.
You're not very nice," I say, grinning. "You're one to talk." "Hey, I could be nice if I tried." "Hmm." He taps his chin. "Say something nice, then." "You're very good-looking." He smiles, his teeth a flash in this dark. "I like this 'nice' thing.
We were one of the first to say, 'Let's make a really nice shirt for skaters and let's make it really well.' We don't dumb down for somebody young; we are always trying to do something new.
I really saw my mom advocate on my behalf and really say, 'Hey, you're good enough.' It was from her that I learned that just because something hasn't been done before, it doesn't mean it can't be done now. You have to speak up, and you've got to assert yourself because it takes somebody to be the first one to make it happen.
I get cast a lot of times in movies with nice people, for some reason, because I have a nice face or something. I mean, it's lucky I'm nice. Usually nice people in movies can be really boring.
Because Buffy really has become the straight man, every once in a while it's nice to be the one that tells the joke and it's nice to be the one that is the joke and it's nice to do something that's a little bit different.
I need to learn how to stop destroying myself, stop being hard on myself and be nice to myself. I need to keep telling myself that I need to keep wanting something, something nice, something warm[so] I can make other people happy. I can understand other people's pain because I can love even after all that is left of me is gone because I have that strength.
Everything comes from a weird place that I don't understand. I make a piece of art just to prove that I exist in my own way. And I can't make something nice. I have to make something that makes me uncomfortable.
Be nice wont you?" "I am nice, I'm always nice." "But not too nice. I mean don't make a religion out of it, niceness.
What I really, really love is writing. If I can just write and make a really nice living out of that, why would I change that?
I wrote Her First American and I always say it took me eighteen years. It took me that long was because after about five years I stopped and wrote Lucinella. I got stuck; it was too hard to write. Lucinella felt like a lark. I wanted to write about the literary circle because it amused me, and I allowed myself to do what I wanted to do. It's just one of the things I'm allowed to do if I feel like it.
I don't spend a lot of time online. My mother's really good at picking out if she sees a really great review, and she'll forward it to me. She's like my little Internet filter. It's always nice to see something going up; if I want to find something on Nathan Fillion, I do know where to look, but I've got a nice little delivery system in my mom.
I wanted to take my writing to another level. I wanted to write stuff that was personal for real. It's one thing to write a lyric that sounds nice in that line - that's not very tricky - but it's a different thing to write something that sounds nice and actually comes from someplace real.
Just because I write some songs about bad women, though, that doesn't mean I hate women. I've written songs that show great love and respect for women too. Songs that talk about strong, upstanding women and their pain. I have women working on my music. They understand where I'm coming from. So does my mama. I always play my music for her before it comes out. Why do you think I wrote "Dear Mama"? I wrote it for my mama because I love her and I felt I owed her something deep.
I'm nice because, when I was growing up, so many people weren't nice to me, and I remember how that felt. And I don't want to make anyone else feel like that. I value nice.