Daniel Day-Lewis Quotes

There is no disputing that Lincoln was a great man.

You can't wait for someone to give you a show. That can't be the first time you're writing and drawing a character.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

Sometimes my lyrics may describe a situation that happened to a friend. Other times, I create a story from the ground up.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can't create it if you don't have one.

It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.

When you're an actor or any kind of artist, you use your life as something to draw from in every experience.

When you're drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, 'Oh, yeah, that's when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she's getting into the car,' you know?

First, I would find an object which I would think is suitable for my characters and stories, then write about it, and in the end, I ended up with a house full of thousands of objects.

I just let the character speak to me and things appear.

So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters' lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams... all arrive unbidden when I'm getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.

In the case of the 'Saint' movie, I did do some research. I visited a few shelters. But usually, my stuff just comes out. I don't have any control over that.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

That's the most amazing thing about writing, whether it's in prose or comics: that you can create something from nothing, and suddenly they come to life, like they've always been there.

Lincoln was one of history's greatest men, but Americans are not like him. He was a lonely exception.

A lot of my characters are born out of a small grain in a person that I heighten and take to that next level. They're not based on anyone I've ever met, but they are these extreme versions of something.

I think there's this idea that the depth of an actor's performance is built on tough times or horrible events or isolation, but I never found that. I figured that my imagination coupled with the story can get me anywhere.

In my experience, a novel is the culmination of various thoughts and impressions collected over time, until something comes along to give them a shape, to turn them into a story.