Forest Whitaker Quotes

I stay true, because whatever the project is, I'm still looking for inside of that character.

That's the whole point of writing to me - I put my characters under incredible duress, and from that comes their truth. In a way, I'm using them to try to find my own answers in life.

I'm not saying that I am all of my characters, but for me to bring a character to life, you've got to be able to find your own truth.

I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.

But I always wanted my characters to be more than cyphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself in them.

My work is intensely personal.

The real road, to me, was within the actor, within myself, within my own personality. How much Jeffrey can I find, and how much of Jeffrey could I access? What parts of Jeffrey have I never used for Hank or for George or Oscar? - and that was a delight.

I think every writer is in search of the truth. We are trying to psychoanalyze ourselves.

When I act, I act with my skin.

You're living your life the entire time in both worlds - it's not like they say, 'Action' and you're like, 'Here we go, we're in this thing,' because that's where bad acting comes from.

I look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them.

All my music is autobiographical, and that's the reason why people like my music. They know when I'm saying something on a song, I mean it. It comes from a real place and captures the realness in my life.

The more shaded, flawed characters that are struggling, I think there's something very relatable about that.

With any character, you have to put part of yourself into it because we are the soul that brings that character to life.

I'm always interested in characters who are closed down, but who open up when they choose to, rather than when they're obliged to. I think that's a very appealing thing, for an audience and just in life. I like the idea that something will say nothing, and then get straight to the point. That feels like how your heroes should be.

For me, so much of my life has been this attempt to find my way back into my body. I tried various forms, from promiscuity, to eating disorders, to performance art. And I think it wasn't until I got cancer, where I was suddenly being pricked and ported and chemoed and operated on, that I suddenly just became body. I was just a body. And it was in that, in that finally landing in myself that I really discovered the world in my body.

Whether it be current or past, every single song that I recorded is about me. It's a peek into my life, past and present. Maybe it's coming from my theater and performance background, but nothing felt right unless I could relate to it.

I try not to think about the idea of reaching more and more people, because once you get in that mindset, I think you lose the point of why you're doing it in the first place. Still, the best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.

In the writing, I'm just trying to go deeper, emotionally, and learn more about myself and reveal more and find a way to connect with people in new ways.

As an actor, you never really set out to be a stand-out character. You just want to do justice to the story and enjoy playing it, and find all the different nooks and crannies of who someone is. For each part that you get, they're all special and you just try to give everything you can to each one. I don't know whether they're going to be stand out in that way or not factors into my work. They all stand out for me.

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.

I'm not the kind of writer that can wake up and say, "Okay, I'm gonna write a song today," and have that song be the kind I would want to record. The songs of mine that I end up liking are songs that come from real experience. They're like chapter titles in my life.

I always just get excited about the character. When something rings true for me, then I'm ready to do it.

You have to be willing to expose yourself, at least to yourself, to get to some kind of truth about a character.

I'm trying to listen to my past, listen to what's most deeply going on inside myself, my creative set of fictional characters, a fictional world - to listen to that world, to search.