Claire Denis Quotes

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

Once I started to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I just let them start talking.

It is necessary to be concerned about the importance of educating a really beautiful human spirit.

I like all my characters in one way or another, or at least I understand them.

In terms of the characters I think are really fun to play, a lot of times it's someone in my head saying 'I know that woman.'

It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.

Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.

I'm doing my best to be mindful about how I'm living: to be kind and patient, and not to impose a bad mood on somebody else. Being mindful is as good a way to be spiritual as anything else.

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

The myth of writer as, like, Asperger-style misanthrope, or, like, the Jack Nicholson, 'As Good As It Gets' - it just doesn't work, because writers, in order to write good characters, need to understand people. You need to understand your audience. You need to have so much empathy you could almost encourage empathy in others.

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

I spend a lot of time with my characters.

I love creating characters and becoming someone else entirely.

You try not to become so emotionally attached to your character, but you do.

When I write, I'm constantly putting myself in the position of someone else as I write using myriad voices; I think that's a life skill all people should learn.

I've discovered I can't make a film about people I dislike.

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

My character from 'Panda Eyes,' Fay, is the character I see myself in a lot.

I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and I can show more compassion to my characters if I write in a first person singular.

As authors, most - most authors, our art is portraying the human condition. Trying to show you what it's like to be somebody else, trying to make you feel for somebody else. That means you have to have a high degree of empathy.

It's the emotional trigger points that are important to me because I know if I could believe in the characters and try and imagine how they felt then I'd be able to do something quite honest.

The strength of fiction is not in reading about yourself, but in reading about other people.