Barry Jenkins Quotes

Trees Lounge is based on my own life. Both my parents like the movie. My father, of course, thinks it's a masterpiece.

Everybody tells you over and over again that addiction is a disease. But when I read Nic's book I understood not just that this is a disease, but what the disease means.

A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it.

My father was predisposed to drunken rages. I would hide under the bed. My sister and I were talking just the other day about the terror a drunken man in a rage can create in a child.

But I'll tell you something: We had a big family discussion about it recently, my two sisters and I, and I pointed out that we all have the same genes as our mother and we're all susceptible to becoming alcoholics.

Underneath our nice, friendly facades there is great unease. If I were to scratch below the surface of anyone I would find fear, pain, and anxiety running amok. We all have ways to cover them up. We overeat, over-drink, overwork; we watch too much television.

When it came to 'Binge,' it wasn't my intention to get on a little soapbox and have a teaching moment. It was more, 'Here are things that have happened to me; here's what I've learned from it. If you'd like to learn from it too, great; if you just like the entertainment aspect, that's fine too.'

There was a reason my first substantial role after rehab was to play a maniac whose personal story ended badly. I knew what it was like to go those dark places. I played a guy who died as a result of his abuse.

Romantically, in my head, I'm Rambo, but if someone's shouting at me, I get adrenalin shakes and go red. When I'm really low, I have a good cry.

That might have a lot to do with it, but you know, I probably don't show fear, but I suffer from fear like everyone else.

Basically, I'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.

All he cares about is going out there with his Jack Daniels bottle. Nothing has changed. That's kind of sad. If David was doing better than he used to be, then that would be different. But it was a joke and he made it that way.

If I did all the stuff I've been accused of - or credited with - there's no way I could make all this music. I'd be drinking myself into the grave.

I made 'Prozac Nation' necessary reading because I write necessarily. I tell my story because it is about everyone else: in 1993, people took pills to relieve the pain just like they do now, but it scared them; it doesn't any more, because talk is not cheap at all - it is tender.

News of Churchill. He is said to be in a very depressed state, spending the entire day smoking and drinking. This is the kind of enemy we need.

Alcoholics are amazed when I admit to them my addiction to work. Here I have a ground of real and not imagined empathy with them. Against the background of this, I have dubbed this addiction of myself and my fellow ministers as “workaholism.”

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you are a millionaire conservative radio jock, which makes it an illness and needs our prayers for your recovery.

Since I've had kids, I thank God that I don't drink, as I really wouldn't have been able to cope.

I think that I write about stuff that others don't write about. I don't have a bunch of love songs cuz I don't really have much boy experience. I just write about what I am actually going through in my real life.

My folks were drunks, and I had a rough childhood - really rough - in fact, rougher than I thought about.

I don't know if I was born an alcoholic, but I was definitely born anxious.

The world is run on fear and shame. And I don't feel like we can begin to overcome these things until we speak about them openly and stop being scared of what happens as a result.

I've been living with anxiety much, much, much longer than I've been with living with alcoholism, that's for sure. I already knew from the sheer numbers and all the data that I'm not alone. I mean, the biggest mistake I did was spending most of my life thinking I was the only person who felt this way.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

My dad was a violent alcoholic. Really aggressive.