Ann Brashares Quotes

It takes a while to establish a character. Richard Boone once told me he didn't really get the character in 'Have Gun - Will Travel' until the 16th show. You just plant a seed, water it, let the sun shine on it, and hope it blooms.

I always think that you finish one movie, you start a new one, and you think, 'OK. I did that last one. Now I've learned. I know how this works.' Then by the end of the movie, you think, 'No, I don't, really.'

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.

Chris Guest has his own form. It's a way of working that is really intense, and you can commit a lot, and you focus a lot. You get to bring a lot. You get to bring things maybe you haven't seen before. You're asked to care a great deal for these people who you're playing and create heart and empathy.

The stuff that I learned on 'Sons,' the education of how to tell stories, was part of that mythology. It's hard to look at it and go, 'Oh, if I knew this, I would have done it this way,' because the fact is I like to think that all that sort of unraveled as it was supposed to.

When you're writing fiction, you're in every character 'cause you can't help it.

Time moves too slowly for me to notice any evolution in my creative tendencies.

I think when you're in the middle of a piece of work, there are things that bleed over into your life. You're spending a large portion of your day pretending to be somebody else, to tell somebody else's story.

Looking back at it now, it's almost overwhelming, the amount of work that went into writing 'Shine', and to come up with the ideas that we're doing now.

It's funny, because you want to make it different, but when I start building a character I do the same thing with each of them, which is start with a blank canvas. It's like painting a picture.

I want to work with as many directors as possible because with each director, you learn something new.

I'm about creating a body of work and moving on to the next thing.

Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.

I identify in some measure with each of my characters.

I made Tony a person. For me, Tony was real. I made him become a human being, and that affected the animation and everything.

There's some of me in all my characters.

'Tongue' is literally just one piece of the puzzle. This album is something I've worked on over the course of my entire career and something I've been discovering myself in it.

You have to bring yourself to a character.

I really wanted to create some of my own characters, then it became wanting to act the parts, then it sort of grew from there because I really enjoyed doing it.

My process is pretty messy, and there's a lot of creative destruction in it. When I set out to write something, I'll write some passages from it just to figure out who these characters are, how they talk. And I have a dim sense of what it's about and where it's going to go, but I know that's going to change, too.

A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract.

I don't want to draw from my own experiences in life. I first like to become the character and then think from her point of view.

My goal is, no matter what genre or story, I'll find a personal angle. It doesn't have to be autobiographical, or specifically Asian-American. It has to explore a burning question that I have.

There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.