Jesmyn Ward Quotes

This little hobbit saves the world. The wizard kills the dragon and saves the town. So many people connect to that character; it doesn't matter if it's an elf or a hobbit or a dwarf. It doesn't matter. They're human in their heart and soul.

In the moment when you're doing a show, you're thinking of that moment, but you don't think of, 'Here's down the line how people will be relating to the characters.' There's something very universal about 'Sex and the City' that people are still tapping into, where every generation seems to be discovering for itself.

I try to bring the audience's own drama - tears and laughter they know about - to them.

I think anybody would be hard pressed not to relate to at least one of the characters, because there's so many different multifaceted people populating this crazy world.

The reason I think the shows I do are successful with a wider public is because they tap into something that's beyond dance and is about being told a story. That's what people want.

I'm a big believer in playing truth and not doing things for effect. It's not about whether you look pretty or glamorous. It's about whether people connect. That's important to me in any work I do. For me, the key is always trying to find the connection between the audience and the character I'm playing.

I like to think if something scares me, then there's a very good chance an audience will feel the same way. The key is creating scenarios that people can relate to.

I think what I look for in a script, it's the relatability quotient that matters the most.

You got to have an emotional connect with the audience who watch you.

I want people to listen to my music all over the world and relate to it and feel it the way I feel it.

If people can't relate to something, there's no use of the song being there.

In You Are Not Dead Wendy Xu breaks all the old rules that have never done us any favors anyway. She writes beautifully, noticing who we are, and letting us see ourselves with a little more humanity, a little more humor, a little more humility. I'm happy to have read this book.

For me, the key is always trying to find the connection between the audience and the character I'm playing. That's important to me, in any work I do.

Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room. I see a lot of gaping wounds and dazed expressions. Or, as Marianne Moore put it, "The world's an orphan's home." And this feels more true than almost anything else I know. But so many of us can be soothed by writing: think of how many times you have opened a book, read one line, and said, "Yes!" And I want to give people that feeling, too, of connection, communication.

I think if you create well balanced characters that are well represented, boys and girls relate to them whether they're boys or girls.

At the end of the day, if you don't identify with the main characters, no television show will work.

The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

One of the things that I love when I go to a film or when I'm reading some book or whatever, is to be told a secret I thought only I knew and then someone says, "Oh my gosh, you know, too." And film can take us into private moments in a way that the theater, I think, kind of can't, and that's one of the reasons I like doing films. And the way a book can is that these little secrets and the private things that go on in our minds that maybe we haven't shared with anyone, and then someone writes it or shows it to you in a film, you think, "Oh, that's me. Oh my God, that's me, I have that secret."

Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.

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.

I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick one up and experience a personal sense of discovery. That's great. But for them, not for me.

When you're looking for a house, you're not looking for a house that's perfect. You're looking for that house to have character. And I think it's those little bits of humanity they come from the music. That's what the music brings out when you have that, it brings out the character of a song. You go back and listen to 30, 40 years of music, and all the great, great songs that we've had in our lives, they all have that character. They have that human nudge, they all have that human relation. You can relate to it.

You just never know if people out there will relate to things when you write them; it matters to you, and to some people it doesn't. Some people are 'I'm not in the mood for that; thanks.'

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.

I had never experienced anything like the response I got from people for Pirates of the Caribbean, where you meet a 75-year-old woman who had seen Pirates and somehow related to the character, and then five minutes later you meet a six-year-old who says, 'Oh, you're Captain Jack!' What a rush. What a gift. That was the challenge with Wonka, too--to be, in a sense, like Bugs Bunny. I find it magical that a three-year-old can be mesmerized by Bugs, but so can a 40-year-old or an 80-year-old. It's a great challenge to see if you can appeal to that huge an age range.