A Quote by Lynn Nottage
I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Sometimes you don't really understand the characters you do. I don't need to. Most of the behavior is obscure and I don't mind that. On the contrary, it's a fuel for me, to find out who the character is. As the spectator is finding out, I find out about the character myself.
I find it difficult to speak in remote places because it is so hot and dusty that I tend to choke.
Some of my books sort of have a provocative take. Sometimes you find interesting things about characters that show they weren't necessarily the way people usually see them. It can make for lively conversations, but that's great. Spark a little controversy, get people to think about it. That's what it's all about.
I've always loved comic books. As a kid, I used to read cowboy stories and historical comics about other worlds, unknown places that would take me out of myself and which helped to develop my imagination.
Reagan wrote out many of his radio commentaries and newspaper articles as well as many of his own speeches. He wrote poetry, short stories, and letters. Trump, in his own hand, writes 140-character tweets.
I like going back in time and writing historical fantasy. I use some real historical characters as a background to give depth to the fantasy. And I throw my fictional characters into the midst of this, and, so far, it has turned out interesting.
Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.
I think a lot of my interest in history now isn't so much in places and names and texts and public figures, but more in examining all the nuances and idiosyncrasies of particular stories of everyday people. And if that doesn't happen, then I usually transplant myself and my own stories to a particular historical event. Which is why you'll see me, the first person pronoun, interacting in a song about Carl Sandburg, or you'll find my [sic] interacting with Saul Bellow. It's sort of a re-rendering of history and making it my own.
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions.
All my novels are very much directly related to my inner life, even though I'm inventing characters, even though it's fiction, even though it's make-believe, it nevertheless is coming out of the deepest recesses of myself.
My knowledge of the state of President Roosevelt's health was derived entirely from conversations, from newspaper articles and from photographs.
Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.
Beginning in the late 18th century, some German scholars began to regard Holy Scripture not as a single revelation but a sequence of inspired texts that occurred in specific times and places and were subject to varied and multiple meanings.
The Internet is a big boon to academic research. Gone are the days spent in dusty library stacks digging for journal articles. Many articles are available free to the public in open-access journal or as preprints on the authors' website.
Sometimes dramas or happenings from 10 or 20 years ago are kept alive by people on a daily basis, whether it's personal issues or bigger things such as what happened with Princess Diana in your country. Some people are still obsessed by that... or JFK and can't let it go. Films and newspaper articles keep being born out of those events.
Related Authors
Abi Morgan Quotes
Welsh
Playwright
Arthur Miller Quotes
American
Playwright
August Wilson Quotes
American
Playwright
Eve Ensler Quotes
American
Playwright
George Bernard Shaw Quotes
Irish
Playwright
George C. Wolfe Quotes
American
Playwright
Jeff Lindsay Quotes
American
Playwright
Moliere Quotes
French
Playwright
Noel Coward Quotes
English
Playwright
Plautus Quotes
Roman
Playwright
Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes
Irish
Playwright
Robert Greene Quotes
English
Playwright
Robert Lepage Quotes
Canadian
Playwright
Sam Shepard Quotes
American
Playwright
Tony Kushner Quotes
American
Playwright
William Shakespeare Quotes
English
Playwright