Debra Granik Quotes

I'm a Midwestern girl, born and bred. It's harder for some of us to write about things closer to home. It's not so much a fear of telling the truth but wanting to do it justice.

I'm from the South, so I tend to tell stories. That's how we express ourselves.

We cheer everyone who goes off to Hollywood and tells American stories but telling Australian stories is the greatest thing you can do.

Every part of the country has its story to tell, so I'm always looking for the next place to be.

I've got headdresses and robes from all over: I am the mystery of everybody's story.

When I'm doing a store in a country, I always like to consider the concept of the country and the city. Ask what are the clothes of the city, what does this city represent for me?

I feel as if I became a documentary film-maker only because I had writer's block for four decades. There's no other good reason.

People have to identify with their own stories, with their own lives, so a movie belongs to a country and to a culture. Sometimes we can share, but it's very rare.

I usually make sure that my stories are from Africa or my own background so as to highlight the cultural background at the same time as telling the story.

I just want to tell black stories.

When we uplift artists who reflect diverse perspectives their stories not only tell us how people view others, but how they view themselves.

At times, yes, I have been typecast. But I love having a regional identity in my songs. I want to deliver music that reflects the culture of our soil.

As artists we have an extraordinary and rare privilege to tell the stories of our people, our land, our culture. They grip us, tear us apart, and put us back together. We are our stories.

The loss of the culture is one of the main reasons Ciro Guerra wanted to tell their story.

I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.

The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it... Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England - but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury.

I think it's hard for an outsider to capture the flavor of a community and all its nuances, so ultimately Haitian-Americans need to start sharing intimate accounts of their stories.

I write because I am a Black woman, listening attentively to her people.

Your subjects have had a history - try to reveal it in your picture.

I do think there is a segment of people in Oklahoma that really do love the Flaming Lips and love this other idea of what someone from Oklahoma could be like. I've sort of become the spokesperson for this "other person" who could come from Oklahoma.

By giving our audience intimate access to the lives of musicians, we hope to raise awareness of the region's beautiful cultural heritage and present a more nuanced portrait of its people.

The album ['A Seat at the Table'] really feels like storytelling for us all and our family and our lineage.

We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it.

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.