Barbara Kruger Quotes

But work that's got real substance does make people feel, "There's someone else out there who relates to my experience, or who just helped me understand my own experience a little bit better." And I think that's still got enormous value.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

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.

That's the power of fiction, that it can take the collective and make it personal.

What I have that's special in my music is substance. It's music that people can really relate to. I know I'm gonna rap something that somebody has already been through in their life, something that they will understand.

I think unintentionally I gravitate towards concepts and topics that hit home or are something real we can all relate to.

The character is close to me, except that I haven't lived through those situations, so it's not completely me.

I have a lot of compassion for human beings in life experiences, so I allow myself to feel what these characters are feeling and don't have a problem accepting that.

We can empathize as deeply as we can empathize.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

Sometimes I think to get to the emotional level of a scene, you don't necessarily have to have experienced the exact thing that person has experienced, but whatever you have in your life that has gotten you to that place is usually enough.

If a song's about something I've experienced or that could've happened to me it's good. But if it's alien to me, I couldn't lend anything to it. Because that's what soul is all about.

When humor works, it works because it's clarifying what people already feel. It has to come from someplace real.

I've always believed you go to literature to find the shared human experience, not the categorized human experience.

I'll never sing something that I've never been through. So even if I didn't write it, I have to have at least experienced it.

Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.

To have a songwriter that wrote so specifically what I felt to be true... I've never been much of an actor either. If something is real for me, then I can do it.

As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own, ways to reflect on things that have happened to us and a chance to engage with the world in ways that transcend time and gender and all sorts of things.

People see truth in my films. That's what they react to, and that's what they relate to.

I think my job is hopefully to connect with people emotionally and to feel less alone or understand things in a certain way.

I can't speak for readers in general, but personally I like to read stories behind which there is some truth, something real and above all, something emotional. I don't like to read essays on literature; I don't like to read critical or rational or impersonal or cold disquisitions on subjects.

To be honest with my music... for me to expect anyone to connect it has to come from a place of honesty.

If you have tapped into something that is real for you, chances are you are going to tap into something that is real for someone else.

It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.