Ryan Coogler Quotes

You hear about people your whole life, 'So-and-so has cancer,' and you're like, 'Wow, that's too bad,' and then most people tend to go about their day. But when someone tells you that it's your father or it's your family, that doesn't tend to go away.

Elvis and I were very good friends. We were such good friends that, on the day that he passed, I was the first one his father called, to let me know what had happened.

I remember being in New Orleans after Katrina hearing people calling, 'Help me,' and wanting to slide down in the seat of my car because it felt like I was invading their suffering. But I also know that our being there gave them a voice.

I'm not desensitized to death.

I remember watching the Twin Towers collapse. Because it was another country and looked like a film, I just sort of thought, 'Oh.' I didn't think that much. Then three days later, it hit me. I was in a terrible state, and I was tearful for three or four days.

We've endured too many tragedies. And each time I learn the news I react not as a President, but as anybody else would - as a parent.

I recall the night that President McKinley died. I was working at the time at a theatre in St. Louis. The oppressive feeling was in the air. I could not make the people laugh.

It came so soon and so fast. It's just overwhelming. Every time I think about it, I just can't believe it.

September 11 reinforced for me that whatever I'm writing about, it better be something that really matters to me because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. And for me it's stories about people in pain in New York.

What I felt is the same kind of love I felt between Waylon and his audience. And that's what I miss.

Initially, the horrific images of September 11th triggered an enormous wave of solidarity.

It felt like a very, very weird thing to go on the set on September 13th. I would never want to glorify that.

When someone dies instantly, then I think the well of grief and disbelief all mixed in with it is unfathomable. And when murder is involved, that just takes it into a whole new place. There is an extra dimension you just can't compute or deal with.

I was just about to begin writing 'Mirror Mirror', within about a week of it, when September 11, 2001 happened. I found myself incapable of caring about fiction-making for a number of months.

Of course the death of Geoffrey has caused a lot of trauma to me generally.

I had never attended a trial until my daughter's murder trial. What I witnessed in that courtroom enraged and redirected me.

I guess I'm curious about how people process grief and how they process loss. And I'm also interested in the ways in which an event can have long-reaching consequences and a life over the course of years.

I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

I saw a great many men die afterwards, some suffering horribly, but I do not recall any death that affected me quite so much as that of this first victim in my platoon.

I remember the day tDr. King died. I wasn't angry at the beginning. It was like something very personal in my life had been touched and finished.

I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.

We all remember where we were and we all remember what we were doing. I had a brother in New York, an uncle, lots of friends in New York. It made me angry, it made me sad; what could I do.

I have experienced a murderer among my friends. Many, many years ago. At close range I have seen the impact of it. I knew the victim, I went to the funeral, I have been to the house, to the specific room where the killing took place, and I was stunned by it. It's such a blow.

I talk to Simon, I write to him. I never used to write a diary. But now I'm writing a diary to him. I think it's not just me, but lots of others, family and friends, can still feel him around.