Aneurin Barnard Quotes

With 'A Northern Light,' I've already heard from teenage readers, teachers, librarians - it's been so gratifying. It's amazing that you can take something that matters so deeply to you and make it matter to someone else.

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

You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.

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

Even if you can't relate to what I'm singing, I hope you can believe in it and see it as something that it is real.

Even though I'm an actor, even though I know a little bit about film, I very much view things as an audience member. For me, whether it's TV, film, theater, whatever, it's a big movie, a small movie, whatever it is, I look for the truth in it. I look for the honesty. I just look for if it feels honest and real to me.

When you're being real, that's endearing to an audience. When you're not being real and you're making jumps to things that don't really follow how they would in reality, people don't appreciate that.

What I write is emotionally honest and truthful as the human experience can be, to make people feel less alone, or at least that's the hope.

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.

I always want the audience to identify with my character in some way. I mean, sometimes you'll get characters that aren't very identifiable. Sometimes you can't relate to your character at all.

At a certain age you start becoming brave enough to reveal yourself and it's the revealing of who you are that enables you to dig deeper into different characters. You'll get to a point where you can say: 'I can relate to that', 'I know that', 'I don't have to make that up' and that resonates with people in the audience who can tell that you've been there.

If I'm in something funny, I like to try and find some kind of serious line in it that people can relate to.

I love the fact that people can relate to what I'm saying, even if it's not for the same subject I was writing about. That is the power of real music and real expression.

Fiction, at its best, is a radical act of intimacy. It seeks to join, to merge, to know deeply; and, as with intimacy, there is a way in which it cannot be faked.

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

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.

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

You're creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it's their experience, not yours. I'll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about 'my' broken heart.

I can't impress enough upon people that if you tell an honest story that people relate to and people believe and invest in, you can do anything.

Whenever I perform, people get me because I'm talking about things that people can identify with and relate to. I'm not just up there doing jokey, jokey, joke.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

If you show you're human and have something to say, people will connect with you.

The closer you can get to being personal, the better the work is, or the more interesting the work is.

I always assumed people wanted to hear me tell stories, but then I had 'The Sunset Tree.' It turned out, my own stories were the ones that registered with people the hardest.

If there is honesty in your face, the battle is won. It doesn't have to be the most beautiful face in the world. The audience can relate to you then. They feel love, not lust, for you.