When I'm writing I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived you know?
I'd like to work with Justin Bieber. He's talented and he's so young. I know what he's going through. I've lived what he's living through right now. Working with him would complete a circle of sorts for me. And he might find it a worthwhile experience himself.
No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.
The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
Sometimes when we weep in the movies we weep for ourselves or for a life unlived. Or we even go to the movies because we want to resist the emotion that's there in front of us. I think there is always a catharsis that I look for and that makes the movie experience worthwhile.
Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.
The people in Iraq lived essentially good lives. They had brilliant health and education systems. Saddam actually created an incredible infrastructure in a very difficult country but they were a Mafia family. If you said anything against that regime or that family you would be killed instantly.
My grandmother lived to be 100 years old. Her grandmother was a slave yet she was a college graduate in the Spellman class of 1917. She taught art for 50 years and she saved her Social Security checks for her children's education.
I was always someone who lived in the future all the time it was always the next thing - dreams of escape.
I've never been bashful to say that I'm not really interested in Formula One. When I lived in England it's all I wanted to do and I thought that anything else would somehow be a compromise to my dreams. But then when I came back to the States I realised how much I loved being back in the States.