Lee Hall Quotes

When I dropped out of high school at age 16, I didn't know I was going to become a writer - I just knew I'd never been happy in school, and I had this strong suspicion I'd be happy doing other things.

When the other kids started calling me nicknames, I knew everything was all right. I have a pretty big mouth, so they hit on that and began calling me Gatemouth or Satchelmouth, and that Satchelmouth has stuck to me all my life, except that now it's been made into 'Satchmo' - 'Satchmo' Armstrong.

Minority is about being an individual. It's like you have to sift through the darkness to find your place and be that individual you want to be your entire life.

I would like to be a great artist. I would quit pitching if I could paint like Monet or Rousseau. But I can't. What I can do is pitch, and I can do that very well.

When I was in high school, I wasn't really popular. I was picked on a lot. And then I did a talent show, and kids started to tell me that I did a good job. It was the first time that my peers told me that they liked what I was doing. Something clicked, and I knew that this is what I wanted to do.

If I wrote a memoir, it would be like 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.'

I knew I wanted to be creative but didn't know how.

I might go on discussing this subject at great length, but after all is said, done, and written, my own book of experiences will best show what these obstacles are, and how I managed to overcome them to some extent.

I didn't want to break with my family. I wasn't about to make waves. But I had this feeling I wanted to do something that I liked to do. Acting's what I liked to do most. There must have been a moment when I felt, 'Oh, my God, I like this and what am I going to do about it?'

The problem turned out to be that I never was that kind of an artist.

I think when I was younger I wasn't really sure if I wanted to act, so I played around with a few different ideas. I wasn't sure whether I might want to write or whether I might want to do something in fashion.

I dropped out of college and ended up making this feature film I wrote when I was 19 with some friends. It was terrible.

I was told I would become nothing. Now I am showing people how big nothing is.

I've realized that I have a lot of different loves, and I want to pursue writing, but I can never divorce myself from music.

When I was coming up, everybody wanted to be Tom Hanks. There was always Robert De Niro and Al Pacino - they were the heavily dramatic stuff. I always had a foot in both camps. The hardest thing was to resist the advice to be like someone else. It took me a while to figure that out.

I try to be like a forest, revitalizing and constantly growing... Kids would tease me, calling me 'Little Bush.' But... I thought being called Forest helped me find my identity.

For all creative people, that's sort of everyone's journey. You feel something inside, and it takes a while to figure out what that looks like and what your voice is.

There was times when I was bullied about dancing and stuff. But you couldn't hit me hard enough to stop me from doing it.

I've always thought a novelist only has one character, and that is himself or herself. In my case, me.

By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events in the book were happening, I knew I'd probably write about them one day. I didn't want to. I'd studied fiction, and I was committed to establishing myself as a fiction writer first.

I was the first person in my family who was ever interested in dance, or fine art of any kind for that matter - I came from a very humble beginning in San Pedro, California.

People want a beautiful story. Hopefully my life story is still beautiful, but that metro stuff doesn't make it much more pitiful.

Being a teenager in a small Austrian village was not fabulous. I tried to fit in and changed myself to be part of the game. I now realise I can create the game.

I thought my story was over. But that was when I realised I finally had a story to tell - and it seems to remind people of their own story.

I think a good comedian was probably bullied a little bit. Probably felt doughy and oblong and rhombus-shaped and strange and a little bit of an outsider, and then learned the healing qualities of comedy.