Christopher Nolan Quotes

Weirdly enough, I don't like to pretend. I try to use things in me, and translate them into the situation and the characters, so it always needs to run through my own veins.

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.

When I'm rapping, like, a turn up song, I'm thinking about what the people want to hear; this is what they're going to like. When I'm singing, I'm, like, telling my story. I'm not worried if people like it; I'm just trying to be truthful, you know what I'm saying? I'm just talking about something that happened to me.

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.

A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.

I know my fans look up to me and that's why I make my songs so personal; it's all about things I've experienced and things I like or hate. I write for myself and hope that my fans like what I have to say.

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

When I'm on stage, and when I'm comfortable or uncomfortable, I have sort of a knee-jerk reaction to try to make people laugh. It's my version of a handshake to show that I want to make a connection and to show what I'm truly like. It's kind of my statement like, "This is what I'm really like. I'd like you to love me."

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

For me [in my stand-ups] I do what is from the heart. I do what I relate to, what I can talk about, things that I can define. I don't try to talk about things just because they might be a popular subject. I talk about things I know about.

I like the idea that Ernest Hemingway always wrote about certain things he knew, he knew the ins and outs, back to fronts of what he was talking about. I love that as an inspiration for myself, to keep it true to what you know. I'm always writing little lines and saving them for later.

Nobody ever wrote a story for me. I told in every story what was really inside my gut, and it came out that way. My stories began to get noticed because the average reader could associate with them.

I was never trying to be the voice for anybody else. I was just trying to sing about what I was going through, and was singing about those things specifically because I knew there was an audience not being served.

I feel the most connected to my art when it comes from my real life and hopefully the audience feels that.

I write songs about my own experiences. You can't lie to yourself. You can't pose to yourself.

The whole point about vision is that it's very individual, it's very personal, and it has to be confessional. It has to be something which hurts - the pulling out of it and putting it on the page hurts. Art can be about the individual writer's response to his or her condition, and if that response comes out of a predigested belief about what the audience wants to hear about the writer's condition, then it has no truth, it has no validity. You either write with your own blood or nobody's. Otherwise it's just ink.

I don't know when I'm writing dark. I don't know when I'm writing funny or even heartbreaking. I'm always just trying to write it true.

If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.

I think that people respond to honesty in music, so I only choose songs that are the truth for me.

Comedy's about opening up and being unique, but to a point where the audience can relate to what you're saying.

I use myself for each part. Naturally, it's my body, it's my soul, it's my feelings. That's the only way I know how to work. I couldn't pretend.

Music to me is about being honest, and it's what I've always pictured music as. I don't see the point of expressing yourself if you are going to be cryptic about it.

I feel like I have some stuff that matches 'Fight Song,' not in necessarily the message exactly but in the emotion and honesty.