A Quote by Peter Ackroyd
None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.
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I wouldn't have been able to go to drama school when I was 19. I don't think I was even conscious of life... I was like a zombie. But when I finished uni' I just realized... just go and do it, stop being a knob.
I wouldn't have been able to go to drama school when I was 19. I don't think I was even conscious of life... I was like a zombie. But when I finished uni' I just realised... just go and do it, stop being a knob.
For so many years, I haven't been able to wrap my head around the concept of time, just feeling like time is something that I don't have control over. It's such a release of control to finally accept that and then just be present. That's always been a big challenge for me.
Well, I kind of did the math in my head when I was like, 9. I was like, 'Well, if I want to make films' - because I want to be a director - 'I could just go on a film set and learn there.' And then I ended up falling in love with acting and the set and making friends all the time. And so I've just been doing that ever since.
I've been to Japan but I've never been to China, I'd love to go to China. I don't know, I like to go to places that are remote. So, I think I'd like to do that more. And just sort of also explore not having a structured work life someday, to have more free time to sort of see what happens.
First time I ever took acid and got really high, as I was walking around I thought "Gee. The world looked like this when I was a little kid." I remember seeing the sparkling reality and three-dimensionality of things. Sort of like a renewal, every time you do it is a renewal, it is a renewal. It keeps your head young. It lets you keep that being able to accept the new thing just as easily as a kid would. Most people get all this stuff in their head like an old library, no room for the new volume to go on the shelves.
I just stopped reading a lot of books. I mean, I read books that I have to read for school, but I don't actually pick up a book and read for fun. On my time off, I go to movies, hang out with friends, go shopping...just little things.
Some fighters know when to stop on their own and go on to something else, and then some fighters have nothing to go back to after they are finished. Some fighters still have the burning fire and feel that they just need to try one more time. Few can do it.
Let's face it, fashion was destroyed by HIV. People would just die like flies in the eighties. Then, my brother died of HIV, so I was shaken by it in a way that you cannot imagine. It has sadly been in my life ever since and affected it for such a long time. It won't let go. To me, it's a fight that's not finished. Of course, there are medicines that help, but half the world has no access to them.
When I'm doing stand-up, it's just me depending on me. I know how to go out there and make people laugh. I've been doing it since I was a teenager. I trust my instincts. I just go out and talk. A lot of the time I let the material come from the top of my head.
If someone writes something shitty and you actually address them, most of the time they're just like, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm a big fan." And they're really nice people. When you're on the Internet, it's people's first instinct to just go after people.
I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head...that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft... it's second nature.
So depending on the day, my schedule is different. But, generally speaking, I get up in the morning, I do a 30 to 45 minute prescheduling of tweets and just seeing if there's anything urgent - do-or-die emails or server outages, stuff like that. Then after that I go to the gym, where I do all my long-form reading - so Instapaper, and all the Kindle books. I go through an embarrassing amount of books per week.
I'm always reading many books at a time. It might be quite unorthodox, but what I do is, since I'm always surrounded with books, I'll read a page of physics, and then I'll read a chapter of a novel that I really love, and then I'll say, "Oh well, what does that mixture do in my head?" I adore reference books. I love encyclopedias. I also like just going back to original texts, because a lot of these self-help books today.
I feel like they would just be the funnest people. I wish I could have been friends with Michael Jackson, just because he had the most badass house of all time and I could just go out and go on amusement park rides and then he could teach me how to moonwalk.
I have been known for almost 30 years to sort of do whatever comes my way. It's always been touch-and-go after each job finishes. I just like to be working.
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