Joanna Coles Quotes

My influences come from real life. I'm not interested in cinema for cinema's sake. I'm interested in life - what one does and how one interacts.

I've met people from all walks of life.

I have never dissected my personal life. What sense would it make?

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

I don't think I'm really a rude person, but now I see myself on television, I think, 'Oh, God, that is a bit strong.' And I wonder if I've always been like that and I haven't been aware of it.

I spend half my time just living my life, and the other half analyzing it.

Of necessity, the autobiographical self is not just about one individual but about all the others that an individual interacts with. Of necessity, it incorporates the culture in which the interactions took place.

I write a lot about other people, like family and friends. I look at their lives and relationships and think, 'Well, if I was in your position, this is how I would see it.'

This much I have learned: human beings come with very different sets of wiring, different interests, different temperaments, different learning styles, different gifts, different temptations. These differences are tremendously important in the spiritual formation of human beings.

I suppose I am interested in the variety of human life - how people live. I am most interested in individuals and how they respond to challenges or to difficulties or just to each other. I am curious about people.

I meet people from different walks of life that I can have relationships with.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

There's a very real possibility in this industry of going out and leading your life and then going home and being a voyeur of your own life. You can literally go watch yourself - where you went last night, what you did, what the things that people presuppose about you. It's kind of crazy.

Most of the songs I write are just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

If we put the camera on ourselves, our friends and neighbors, we'll come up with some scary stuff.

What interests me about life most is people, and the why of the world. That's what theatre looks at: it examines life, and gives it a cohesiveness that life doesn't have.

I think if you write about human relationships, you're always exploring the psyche and the soul. I don't separate certain - perhaps more extreme - things that people do from others.

Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing.

I'm self-deprecating, but I'm an artist, too. I have to write new songs to chronicle stuff for myself. I write a song like 'Middle Age' or 'Responsibility' or 'I Just Work Here,' and it's about how bleak life can be. But it's real.

I love people, watching people interact. It's a lot of psychology. We learn about ourselves by watching other people's lives on the screen.

Meeting all walks of life, it broadened your horizons, let's say that.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

I look at life, the experiences I've had, at the human condition, the dynamics between people, the news (world news), and draw from the compelling realities all around us.

A lot of my work comes from my life experiences.

We all recall what is or was important to us and are astonished when it slips other people's minds. Perhaps we dismiss as irrelevant matters of crucial concern to those we love. That's life as most of us experience it, and which few movies document with such understated acuity as 'Boyhood' does.