F. Sionil Jose Quotes

So, I was just a young guy, maybe with an idea, and Cecil Taylor, himself a rebel, would take a chance on a guy like me. It turned out to be a very symbiotic partnership. I learned a lot from him.

I always love working with young actors, because there's always something to learn. It's always exciting to see the next generation and how they approach things and what's great about them and what's not so great about them.

I try to read writers who are better than me because it inspires me to be better.

I just feel energized when I am around young, talented people. There is something about these kids that's amazing. I learn as much from them as they do from me.

I started out modeling at a young age and surrounded myself with different brilliant minds. I have so many people to get educated from, and I've been a sponge.

For every young person I meet, I learn an idea.

I also have a role model back in New Zealand, a woman called Miranda Harcourt. She's an actress and a writer. Her willingness to stay open to material is really great. I read a lot, and I try to watch and listen to diverse material.

I give talks to theater arts departments, and I don't know what I'll say. I don't plan a thing. It's just the energy of these young people. They're the next generation, and what they have is very representative of how I felt when I was 19 or 20 or so. I'm really happy to be with them.

I love working with young people and young filmmakers, and I love working on first films. I think it's cool. It's fun. I just take it as it comes.

I work with a lot of young people who have poems that are changing their lives, that they're eager to talk about, but every now and then when I meet someone, maybe someone of my parents' generation, and I tell them that I write poetry, they'll begin to recite something that they memorized when they were in school that has never left them.

I was taught Shakespeare brilliantly by an eccentric genius at Harrow named Jeremy Lemmon who made me want to be a writer.

I do have the feeling that other writers can't help you with writing. I've gone to writers' conferences and writers' sessions and writers' clinics, and the more I see of them, the more I'm sure it's the wrong direction. It isn't the place where you learn to write.

I'm lucky to be surrounded by incredibly talented people at Pixar, of course, and I learn a lot from them each and every day.

My biggest inspiration is to work with interesting filmmakers and learn from them in any way that I can.

All I am doing every day is soaking in everything - I'm like a sponge, from all these award-winning directors, writers, and actors - as much as I can.

Rick Rubin and my father had a great friendship and it's because of it that the work my dad did at the end of his life was created - that he felt creativity and invigorated again, even though he was being consumed by frailty.

I love working with younger actors because they always come into the game full of energy and ideas that challenge me and keep me learning and stimulated.

Periodically, I return to the classics for inspiration and refreshment.

I've been able to work on shows with amazing role models, amazing actors, incredible female filmmakers.

The 'Damsels' crew was low-budget, young people who were doing their first thing almost. A lot of it. It felt like Pied Piper or Rumpelstiltskin or whatever: it was me and people thirty years younger or more. But it was great; it was really fun.

From the very beginning, we just sort of made things up together. That's one of the great things about having a twin brother; you have a sort of feedback loop, where you can bounce things off of each other.

I like working with students a lot and watching some of the amazing stuff they put together.

I value teaching. It's one of the places I get inspiration, engagement.

I'm self-taught. Even today, on the sets, I probe the lightmen, the stunt artistes... they are from a period I've not seen; I can visualise it through them.

Sometimes you get too jaded, too seasoned. With Hellyeah, we've been having a lot of fun. From the minute we sat down in the studio, there was a lot of energy.