Edward Norton Quotes

I think what I'm trying to do is create moments of recognition. To try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience.

I think unintentionally I gravitate towards concepts and topics that hit home or are something real we can all relate to.

I think people relate to the music because I have a sense of empathy, and I think I have a good understanding about relationships, and I talk about them in a real, honest way

Sometimes I think to get to the emotional level of a scene, you don't necessarily have to have experienced the exact thing that person has experienced, but whatever you have in your life that has gotten you to that place is usually enough.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.

It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.

That's the power of fiction, that it can take the collective and make it personal.

It's important to me to create archetypes of human experiences and make them so that the song has a sense of purpose when you experience those emotions. You know, just making people feel like they're not alone.

What I have that's special in my music is substance. It's music that people can really relate to. I know I'm gonna rap something that somebody has already been through in their life, something that they will understand.

Literature presents you with alternate mappings of the human experience. You see that the experiences of other people and other cultures are as rich, coherent, and troubled as your own experiences. They are as beset with suffering as yours. Literature is a kind of legitimate voyeurism through the keyhole of language where you really come to know other people's lives--their anguish, their loves, their passions. Often you discover that once you dive into those lives and get below the surface, the veneer, there is a real closeness.

You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.

I think I was able to talk to people about values in ways that people - in ways that resonated with folks.

I've come to realize that people connect more when they know you're telling them the truth or some aspect of your story, some mutated version of how you are experiencing this life.

I think readers are just looking for things that maybe they recognize or can relate to in the books.

What I write is emotionally honest and truthful as the human experience can be, to make people feel less alone, or at least that's the hope.

I think people enjoy "The Lobster" because people respond to original things, but I think they only respond to original things if they connect to some truths within us.

I read to see myself in other people's lives.

By making the place and the people and the feelings real, by the time someone closes the cover of one of my books, they have, hopefully, felt all of the emotions of life.

Poems are other people's snapshots in which we see our own lives.

A lot of people have told me, you know, that what I've written about, they identify with strongly.

I don't want people walking out of a movie thinking I was trying to act or be some movie star. I want them to think, 'That might make me like Jessica a little bit more.'

Sometimes you think certain details are things that only you would notice, so it's a great thing to feel like you're not by yourself and people understand where you're coming from.

I think everybody wants to connect. There is nothing worse than feeling disconnected. And stories that really move people and make people care are the ones where they feel some sort of connection.

I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick one up and experience a personal sense of discovery. That's great. But for them, not for me.