You can't tell the story of a 13-year-old boy who knows every lyric to 'Phantom of the Opera' without also referencing how much teasing he gets at school.
I'm blessed. I have a 13-year-old girl's eye and a 14 year-old boy's eye. I've been given the gift of sight by people who decided to donate organs. I try to do as much organ-donor work as I can.
Usually for a movie, if you want a 13-year-old, you get a 16-year-old who looks 13, because 13-year-olds dont have that level of self-awareness.
There's no reason anybody should be reading too much into 'Thrift Shop.' I just have because I have a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old who are really into going to lyric websites, hitting print, and printing lyrics for every song that's popular.
Yes, it gets better, but I also understand that saying to a 15-year-old that, 'Oh, don't worry, just wait a year', is like saying 'Wait a lifetime', but every single person has the right to go to school and not be afraid.
We got to see Sondheim shows, 'Phantom of the Opera,' 'Cats' and all sorts of stuff. When you're 10 or 11 years old, it's just magnificent. The story-telling, the music - it lifts you out of your seat.
I'm still wondering about the Phantom in the chair, you know at the end of Phantom [of the Opera], so I guess that's my sort of idiocy. I still haven't figured out how they do that.
I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.
I was 13 years old. I feel like I didn't have a sense of artistry, and I didn't have a sense of the music that I wanted to make, and every time I'd go into the studio, and I'd make my EP, a month later I'd scrap it and be like, 'I hate every song. I don't wanna do it.' Because that's how 13-year-olds are.
If you gauge how you're doing on whether somebody is responding vocally or not, you're up a creek. You can't do that; you kind of have to be inside of your work and play the scene. And tell the story every day. Tell the story. Tell the story. Regardless of how people are responding, I'm going to tell the story.
The media is looking every season for a designer to tell a story. I have a long story I have to tell, continuing fluently year after year.
My highest compliment is when someone comes up to me to say, "My 14-year-old daughter, or my 12-year-old son read your book and loved it." I cannot conceive of a greater compliment than that - to write something that as an adult I find satisfying, but also that manages to reach a curious 13- or 14-year-old.
I'm actually a perpetual 13-year-old. I've never advanced beyond 13. Every day, tomorrow is my 14th birthday. That's my kind of humor.
the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.
My message is to forget about dichotomies. The Brain Opera is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voices - so I do consider it an opera.
In the Broadway world, I've always wanted to play Valjean in 'Les Mis', since I've already played Gavroche. I'd also like to play the Phantom of the Opera, but I haven't really thought about any film characters. You've got to have a whole lot of training for the Phantom role, vocally.
I don't want to write things that people don't want to read. I would have no pleasure in producing something that sold 600 copies but that was considered very wonderful. I would prefer to sell 20,000 copies because the readers loved it. When I write books I don't actually think about the market in that way. I just tell myself the story. I don't think I'm talking to a 10-year-old boy or a six-year-old girl. I just write on the level the story seems to call for.