Zendaya Quotes

Every time an adult is going to write something for a teenager and you don't have, physically, a person who is that, you are always going to be a little off.

I look for songs that the listener, when they hear it, they believe what I'm singing about, that I know what I'm singing about. That's my whole deal. I try to choose songs that a male or a female can perform and relate to.

I'm only 24 so I like to think I'm still close enough to 17 to still remember what it was like. Besides, I could just fake it and get away with it... it's not like there are any teenagers that still read comics.

But you can't show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture. You've got to show what it's really like, and try to reach them on their own grounds.

It's so hard when you're young to look at older people and understand that they have been where you are. It's the weirdest thing. You just can't get your head around that, can you? You can't get your head around the fact that someone who is 60 was once 16, if you're 16. But the fact is they have been, and they remember it.

The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck. The baseline is it takes so long for you to work those atrophied muscles - for you to get on parity with what women's representations of men are.

I think by definition you need to have lived a little bit to write anything that's humanly true.

I suppose I was waiting until I was old enough to have some sort of experience to sing about. When you're young, it's hard to sing the blues. Nobody believes you.

I just want to portray a very honest character that displays traits that people can truly relate to and can help them - the audience and myself because I learn from the characters as well - help them see themselves in a perspective that is outside of what they know already, and grow from that experience.

As far as my street cred goes, I'll always have that, because I always hang with the kids. I'll jump right off the stage and buy them a beer. I'll be a star on stage, but I'll always hang with the kids.

The highest praise is when a kid says, 'This book feels so real; this could have happened at my school.'

If you want to persuade people, you've got to talk with your heart. You've got to talk about why your policies matter to them.

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'm genuine, and I think people can see that when they watch.

People treat serious subjects so seriously, which is so obvious a way of dealing with them. I'm always thinking that the best way of dealing with them is to show people as human beings.

Overstating America's issues doesn't make us relatable; it makes others' issues easily dismissable.

Why am I not just some old woman ranting in a room? I think because what I say connects with people's truths.

If I see something in somebody, if it's something similar in my shot, I feel like it's the same type of thing in life. People who tell you what to do all the time or have all the answers for you, it's like, 'OK, whatever.' But if you've gone through something in life, you can speak to something a little more.

I try to speak from a place of understanding and most times I'm speaking from a place of experience.

Even 'Posham Pa' is written by a woman so it's a perspective which I empathise with more.

I've always said my audience is just me. It's somebody out there who's exactly like me and just isn't writing Daring Fireball.

I feel like the more real we are, the more people will respect that.

Don't try to describe the ocean if you've never seen it.

When you're being real, that's endearing to an audience. When you're not being real and you're making jumps to things that don't really follow how they would in reality, people don't appreciate that.

A lot of times I don't know if I trust the director to tell that film's story. Or I think it's inappropriate for a male director to tell a female story, or a white director to tell a black story. Everyone walks away from a movie differently, because you're relating it to your own life.