Chang-Rae Lee Quotes

Whatever it is that I feel, I express it! I am free with my joy, my laughter, my pleasure, my pain, and I am blessed in that way as an actress that I can access those feelings within myself and not be ashamed to show whatever that is that's appropriate for the character.

As an actor, you express certain things because they need to be expressed, and then you don't really feel a need to do it again. I want to feel something else, you know?

I've been very lucky in the freedom that I've been given. Every artist needs two types of freedom: You need the freedom to - the freedom to come up with an idea or treatment - and then you need the other half of the freedom, and that's freedom from - somebody saying, 'This is great. This is how I want you to do it.'

One reason I think I am able to work with such dark material is the fact I was never really discouraged from making this kind of work.

To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.

Because poets feel what we're afraid to feel, venture where we're reluctant to go, we learn from their journeys without taking the same dramatic risks.

Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.

Art = a mad search for individualism.

To be an artist is a blessing and a privilege. Artists must never betray their true hearts. Artists must look beneath the surface and show that there is more to this world than what meets the eye.

There's such a freedom about being an artist... You're not accountable - you're this renegade thing.

Writing fiction lets you be a little more emotional and unguarded, a little freer. Writing fictional characters is also really different from writing about real people. In nonfiction, you can only say so much about the people you interact with. After all, they're actual people, their version of their story trumps yours. In a novel, you can build a character, using certain parts or impressions of someone you know, and guessing or inventing others, without having to worry that your guesses or memories or inventions are wrong.

Photography has arrived at the point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. In any case, a certain aspect of the subject now belongs to the domain of photography. So shouldn't painters profit from their newly acquired liberty, and make use of it to do other things?

In television, I don't feel constraints. I feel a lot freedom to maneuver.

I believe in the art of literature, I believe in freedom of the imagination, I believe in the kind of liberties that we enjoy in these lucky countries of the world.

The freedom of poetic license.

The freer the soul, the more abstract painting becomes.

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Music is the can-opener of the soul.

Did not the artists of the great age of Japanese art change names many times during their careers? I like that; they wanted to safeguard their freedom.

It used to make me unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned how to make feeling work for me... I don't know, I just want to feel as much as I can, it's what 'soul' is all about.

grievance does not make for great art.

I enjoy both acting and screenwriting, in completely different ways. You have more creative freedom with writing because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

Music falls on the silence like a sense / A passion that we feel, not understand.