Damien Chazelle Quotes

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.

It's so easy to call something a Jewish story or a gay story or a woman's story. Aesthetically, if a story is not universal, it has failed. Your obligation is to the story. One rule creatively, and emotionally, is its universality.

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

I think that emotion and good stories can cross the times.

Literature universalizes the truth.

The great thing about fiction is you can talk about things without being didactic about them, but hopefully forge a connection with people and an understanding about a shared humanity that tells its own story.

I had self-doubt about whether my story was interesting to people. I didn't want to write something that was anecdotal. It was important to me that people would get something out of my book. I want people to read it and say, "Now I don't feel so alone," or "I'm going to remember that next time I'm being an asshole."

The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in.

Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You're absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can't do for you.

As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own, ways to reflect on things that have happened to us and a chance to engage with the world in ways that transcend time and gender and all sorts of things.

The thing about storytelling is it's very stripped down; it's very much at the core of 'I'm a person and I'm just telling you this thing, and I need you to trust me and believe that what I'm saying is true, and if you believe that what I'm saying is true then we are connected to each other.' I think there's something really beautiful about that.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation.

I think that when we look at something that's well acted and a story that's well told, it allows us to be a mirror of who we are as human beings and as a culture, and offers a glimpse of where we're headed.

Depending on the story that you're telling, you can be relatable to everybody or nobody. I try and tell everybody's story.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

My search is always to find ways to chronicle, to share and to document stories about people, just everyday people. Stories that offer transformation, that lean into transcendence, but that are never sentimental, that never look away from the darkest things about us.

When I hear other people's stories, I like to believe that they contribute to my 'Encyclopedia of Human Experience.' The stories I hear help me expand my definition of what love is, what pain feels like, what sacrifice means, what laughter can do.

The best fiction stays with you and changes you.

My only job is to write in such a way that the reader gets a new handle on humanity.

I want to earn a reader's capacity to be moved.

By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.

That's why I write fiction, because I want to write these stories that people will read and find universal.

When a story is told really well and is real, even if it's not about their own lives, people can apply it to themselves.

I love telling people's stories.