Pat Barker Quotes

I went to school at Juilliard, and most of our training there is the classics, and as much as I thrive in contemporary, weird, experimental work, I really am excited about finding a pioneer woman or something from a different era that I could really sink my teeth into.

When I was 16, I watched a lot of world cinema. I borrowed a lot of my personality from cinema. It has been one of my biggest teachers.

The blast blew most of my teeth out, I have screws and plates in my face, I lost the eye.

Murakami's ability to deconstruct and his aesthetic and conceptual freedom have been totally inspiring for me.

With 'The Missing Picture,' we'd shot for a year and a half already when this idea of the clay figurine, the life that comes from the earth, came to me, and I changed everything.

I think I had my answers to the questions in 'The Witch,' and I had my answers to the questions in 'The Lighthouse;' I need those in order to write and direct them.

I listen to music because that's such a huge part of my process; not to sound super pretentious, but that's a big part of what helps me get in character.

What drives me is character driven material.

If we can reach in wih the art and touch the imagination of the child, no matter who, we have affected that child.

In writing the new films, I’ve come to realize that AVATAR’s world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen.

Sometimes you have to search for inspiration with characters, and other times, they just drop out of the sky and arrive.

I feel like art imitates life and life imitates art.

Warhol influenced me because of his writing. If I had never read his writings and interviews, I would never have understood his work.

All my art is in some way about other art, even if the other art is cartoons.

I think that there are a lot of great studio people but the fewer voices in my head when I'm getting out a draft, the better. I just get it out and then I'll listen to all manner of good ideas. And that's what happens, too, when I'm touring and doing a character on stage.

I've always found it difficult to start with a definite idea, but if I start with a pond that's being drained because of a diesel fuel leak and a cow named Hortense and some blackbirds flying over and a woman in the distance waving, then I might get somewhere.

No art goes unmediated by other art.

Life imitates art -- but badly.

If you know what it is before you even start, it's not as interesting. Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations. I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is. I have to worry less about what the character means if I trust the director.

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.

I looked at a lot of the comics and I tried to just get an idea from that. Not necessarily specifics of what my look would be or what the plan would be because I knew the script was evolving. I then started the discussion with Ken, who had been in discussion with you guys, intimately. And that they'd pared it down.

I looked, for example, to certain types of literature to which I would like to refer, like The Peregrine by J. A. Baker, and I mention a book, "read this, read it, read it if you are serious of being in any type of art or into filmmaking," or films that I should quote as examples.

I'm just looking for characters that continue to make me stretch and grow and learn more about the human condition.

I was just infused with ideas and I would dream about it and wake up and go, "Oh, I have another idea about Walter White." It was so well written. And it just got into my soul.

I appreciate the written word and spoken word more, but Atonement sort of established so much of me. It was a character that didn't really speak, and I found that a lot of the roles I was gravitating toward after that were kind of nonverbal.