Damian Marley Quotes

I think people do want to relate their entertainment to what's going on in their lives. Not everything.

My shows and my material are grounded in reality. It's pretty much something that's either happened in my life or in the news, and I start there and give you my take on it.

In my films, a lot of the situations come from real life.

My writing is authentic, and whatever happens in my life is what I write about.

Even though everybody's lives are different, in general we're all human beings, and we go through the same things: disappointments, the pleasures of life, life and death. That's always been a really big part of the show to me, making sure the audience feels connected, and that carries through to the album.

When you go on vacation with people, you learn a lot about them.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

I think it speaks to people in 2015, right now. We address real situations. It's real life! Everything that happens in 'Dope' could happen today.

Definitely, there is a sense in my writing that people now know me in a personal way. And to an extent, that's true because I write about very personal things, and I use the personal often to contextualize some of these sociopolitical issues that we're dealing with. And to an extent, they're right. They know something about me.

I try to do women's-point-of-view comedy. The joke is, 'This is what I think; there's the truth.' I try to think of stuff that's real broad, but the more personal it is, the more universal it is. All my friends go through the same stuff.

None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

'Social Network' is a good story with human experience connective tissue that makes it ageless.

You know, real life doesn't just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it. Democracy, marriage, friendship. You can't just say, 'She's my best friend.' That's not a given, it's a process.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment.

So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

Every song I've ever written has been based in reality, based in fact, things that happen to me.

In the first test screening of 'RoboCop,' it tested very high. Then they asked the people why they liked it, and the first answer was, 'I liked it because it was political.' And the second answer was because, 'It feels like it deals with current affairs.' And the third answer was, 'Because it feels emotional.'

Inevitably I draw on my own relationships when I write, so if I'm writing about a fight between a husband and his wife, of course I'm going to think about a recent fight with my husband. Or if I'm writing about sisters, of course I'm going to think about my sister.

I think anybody would be hard pressed not to relate to at least one of the characters, because there's so many different multifaceted people populating this crazy world.

To show that a comedian on stage in India talking about sanitation or in South Africa talking about HIV and AIDS awareness, if you follow the joke into their lives, you can see that, like, oh, these things aren't just contrived in joke books. This is real life. I think the best comedians have that bravery and courage to say, Oh, this is what it is.

… people never become a mass, they remain entities, and so you are able to feel human suffering and make others feel it because it is represented to you by individuals

Films are big hits when they touch a lot of people. Things are not funny in a vacuum, they're funny because we respond to some personal dislocation, some embarrassment, some humiliation, some pain we've suffered, or some desire we have.

The best songs/films/collections expose truths about life and make them universally accessible; they progress humanity.

Honestly, I want to make more music for the women. I rather have a show full of girls, but I still gotta talk about what I be personally going through, what I've gone through, and what the homies go through.