Lizz Winstead Quotes

The Catcher in the Rye had such a deep impact on me, because it felt like it was just Holden and me. I didn't feel like any other person had read that book. It felt like my secret. Writing that I identify with feels like it's just me and the writer. So I hope that whoever is reading what I do feels like that.

Love stories should be relatable.

If you're going to make an emotional connection with somebody, whether it's in the story or in the world, there's a certain amount of self-acceptance that is required.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

I do truly believe that the smallest stories can wind up being the biggest because it's through the specific that a writer can best access the universal.

With 'A Northern Light,' I've already heard from teenage readers, teachers, librarians - it's been so gratifying. It's amazing that you can take something that matters so deeply to you and make it matter to someone else.

Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.

I guess I'm trying to write stuff that I, as a viewer, would connect to.

I think you're always drawn to what you love, and I'm always really drawn to things that feel really real and really true to me. I love things that make me think of things in a way I hadn't, and I love looking at people in the world in a way that I hadn't. And sometimes big, huge stories do that for me, but I think I am drawn to smaller ones.

I want everyone who's listening to know who I am and not just see me as this singer. I want them to feel connected to my story.

We write songs that hit different people at different ages where they live.

Even though I was super personal with 'American Teen,' I want to tap in and not just tell my own stories but tell the stories of other people - so that I can help as many people as possible.

My songwriting is personal in the hope that listeners will know that I relate to them.

I'm still writing from personal experiences, which is what people connected with in the first place.

I'm not a gifted storyteller, so I write what I know and hope that honesty resonates with other people's experiences.

I'm always careful about the thing I'm writing to make sure a viewer can imagine it happening to themselves.

There's always to me a universality - one of the things I learned early on as a journalist and a writer is that there's a universality in specifics. The more specific you get, the more universal it can be.

What I write is emotionally honest and truthful as the human experience can be, to make people feel less alone, or at least that's the hope.

I love the fact that people can relate to what I'm saying, even if it's not for the same subject I was writing about. That is the power of real music and real expression.

I've found that the common humanity of people is the most relatable thing, and even if your stories are very specific about a different place, if you have a relatable core of humanity, people will go along with it.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

My main goal as a songwriter is to make something that inspires people. To write things about my life that people can relate to. Whether it's a whole record or just one song for someone, I hope it can do that for them. Knowing that I have the ability to do that is inspiring to me.

Some of the writers I admire who seem very, very funny and very emotional to me can develop a closeness with the reader without giving too much of themselves away. Lorrie Moore comes to mind, as does David Sedaris. When they write, the reader thinks that they're being trusted as a friend.