A Quote by Maya Angelou
Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'
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Hold those things that tell your history and protect them.
There's something great about being a really young actor because you don't have a chance to be nervous. You don't know anything yet. Whereas one of the big challenges as you go through - I've been doing acting professionally for 10 years now - is to not let all the things that you know hold you back and make you more nervous. Once you've had a few people tell you that they don't like your ideas, that voice in your head can creep in that says, "Don't tell them what you think."
If you don't tell your stories, other people will tell their story about you. It's important that we nurture and protect these memories. Things change. Existence means change.
If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.
I don't ask my students to have studied film or any education in general. What I ask them is to come and sit and tell me a story, and the way they choose it and tell it, for me, the best criteria for whether they are right for making films. There's nothing more important than being able to tell your story orally.
I may not know the weight of those things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it to myself. You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it's why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible.
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.
In old interviews I was still worried about being judged. I think my life was about how can I keep myself in control. How can I just get through this and be okay? And, you know, you turn the corner. You realize that you're not imprisoned by your life or your circumstances or your genetics or anything. I really believe that we all have the ability to come out of our story. But you have to tell your story first in order to come out of it.
The best time to tell your story is when you have to tell your story. When it's not really a choice. But then, when you get that first, messy, complicated version down, you have to read it over and be very tough on yourself and ask, 'Well what's the story here?' If you're lucky enough to have someone you trust looking over your shoulder, he or she can help you if [you] lack perspective on your own story.
Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.
Life is painful sometimes. It touches everyone, so you may as well try to look for other answers and find peace. So, it is difficult to write those types of things because nobody wants to tell sad stories. I think that I'll always tell stories about human hope. I would love to be able to tell somebody, "It's okay. It's all right. Be a good person." That's what my job is, in life.
Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them.
Kids, if anything, are harder to write for because they are a more discerning audience. They will not stay with you if you go off on a tangent or if you give them extraneous information that doesn't serve the story. You really have to tell a tight story. You have to give them humor and suspense and believable characters. All those things that adults want too, but you have to be really on your game when you're writing for kids.
I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your boyfriend or your grandma... I'm getting a little tired of 'my life story as fiction'. Please don't tell me about your little life - is there nothing larger? More important?
People have been telling me I'm a failure and that I'm doing it all wrong for 20 years now. Never trust anybody when they tell you how your story goes. You know your story. You write your own story.
If you've witnessed bullying or if you're being bullied, tell somebody you trust. Tell mom and dad. Tell your counselors or your coaches. Tell your teachers. Tell an adult who you trust.
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