Ayad Akhtar Quotes

I think everybody wants to connect. There is nothing worse than feeling disconnected. And stories that really move people and make people care are the ones where they feel some sort of connection.

I think it can be really powerful, and one of the reasons I love making films is I do feel they can reach beyond the statistics and the numbers and the complexities of a particular issue and really highlight the humanity in a way that an article or newspaper story might not be able to do.

There is a biblical injunction to tell your children, but the sages who created the Seder several thousand years ago understood that it had to be more than just speaking: that in order for something to connect so emotionally in human beings, it had to be relived.

I think it is important to reach people through arts and literature, because then you establish a connection that's not an instant crisis.

Humanity has this need to hear stories because they connect us with other people, they teach us about our own feelings. We feel less lonely when we see other people going through the same things, even if they're fictional characters.

I think if I'm serious about affecting people with music, I have to affect people on a human to human level, not on a grand social idea or political idea, it has to be a human being idea so it has to be what's inside a human being.

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?

I've come to realize that people connect more when they know you're telling them the truth or some aspect of your story, some mutated version of how you are experiencing this life.

I think people enjoy "The Lobster" because people respond to original things, but I think they only respond to original things if they connect to some truths within us.

By making the place and the people and the feelings real, by the time someone closes the cover of one of my books, they have, hopefully, felt all of the emotions of life.

You want people to think. You want people to be emotionally moved. And there's a theory behind that in terms of storytelling. It has been around for thousands of years. And that's where something like live theater or a live performance is something that is very valuable because you get instant feedback from your audience and you kind of know the things that work and the things that don't work.

I've never cared about how successful or how big I was going to be. I just wanted to be part of a story that affected people, made them laugh or cry. To me, that was more important than having my face on some billboard.

A good movie humanizes people.

The thing is, right now the films don't need to be overtly political to be about our times. We also need films that are just human, that are about people. People need that, too. It's like we need to reconnect to what it is to be human. Not just what our political situation is. That's not what I'm thinking about exclusively. Human content is needed again, as it was in the '70s. I think films were more human than they've been since then.

For me, I think it's such an important thing to hear other people's stories, because you do find ways that either you can learn something from them, or you can identify with something that they've gone through. You realize that maybe what you're going through in life isn't just specific to you, that somebody else understands it, or you talk to someone and all of sudden you see something in a completely different way because of what they've said to you or shared with you.

You don't want to just preach to people; you want to get them emotionally involved, and I think you do that with a wonderful human story about one person's struggle.

The job of reading is to use stories as a way into seeing other people as we see ourselves

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

I really think one of the greatest allies you can have is the imagination of your audience.

I tell people, "It's the hardest thing to explain, but it's the easiest thing to understand." And all anybody really needs to know is, the struggles of life, the joy of life, the excitement and the heartbreak of life is something we can all connect to. And I like to hope that the inclusivity of the show [This Is Us] is something that audiences will relate to.

It's not as if the stories merge to a point where you think they are your life, but you do let them in the front door and the back door, and it's okay that sometimes certain characters stay for dinner.

Your movie should lull people into a place of openness and vulnerability. If it is just a diatribe, it's never going to work.

I'm being probably naïve, but I would like to think that once something moves you and you have an emotional involvement with it, and you see some relevance in it to your own life, then it's a little bit harder, maybe, to look at the people that produced it as being just exotic others that don't have any connection to you or relevance to you.

It's the feeling that really creates the attraction, not just the picture or the thought. A lot of people think, “If I think the positive thoughts, or if I visualize having what I want, that will be enough.” But if you're doing that and still not feeling abundant, or feeling loving or joyful, then it doesn't create the power of the attraction.

One of the great things about drama is that it makes you feel like you're not a crackpot, and that there are other people who think and feel the way you do.