Nate Powell Quotes

I think there are parts of myself in every character I play.

'400 Blows' was so much like my own childhood, it really stunned me.

I think what I reacted to so strongly when I first saw 'Pinocchio' was that I identified with the character so strongly. The movie takes you on a whole journey, a rollercoaster of emotions, and that sometimes means some very scary places. But in the end, it comes out okay.

I very much want to write about some elements of my own growing up.

You relate to a character and you find that character within yourself. It's all parts of me. I don't leave characters behind. I just let them go.

It's the only way I really know how to tell the story is to be able to kind of live through the characters. So when I find something that resonates with me, it's usually because it cuts to something very real inside of me; something that I've gone through or experienced.

I write in that space between Ella's childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.

None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

I don't eschew autobiographical writing, but I'm not interested in mine to be so straightforward. The things that tend to move me the most are often those that I have to figure out its meaning for myself. The human being's ability to make a metaphor to describe a human experience is just really cool.

England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.

You just write what you know, and I know what it's like to be a teenager in 1993,, and I'm a woman, so I'm definitely going to write from that point of view.

For me, that's always been one of the great charms of the first person: we gain access to a very personal, private kind of music.

I relate to most of the characters I play, because I do feel like an outsider.

I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.

It's interesting because, even with 'Beetlejuice,' I was an awkward kid. I started at puberty and went through it on film. Lydia was one of my favorite roles because I related to her a lot.

'Tender' is my most strongly autobiographical play.

The most autobiographical thing I've ever written is my second novel, called 'An Ocean in Iowa.' That is pretty close to my childhood.

Most memoir writers will tell you that the hardest part of writing a memoir isn't what to include, but what to leave out.

All of my songs were about my firsthand experiences. Pretty much, I've learned how to become my own muse and take situations from my own life and wear them on my sleeve.

I've realized that I will probably write about teenagers and that time in people's lives - I'll probably come back to it a lot.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

With "Margaret," I remember clearly it was, you know because I did remember it clearly. I was young. I was young in terms of experience and what did I know about and I had an incredible memory from my own childhood. And so it never occurred to me to write for any other age group. And I thought I'm going to write a book and I'm going to tell the truth.

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

Other people have suggested that I write about teens because I'm perpetually stuck in that stage of my own development. That could very well be true. I would throw out that teens and tweens are just absolutely fabulous and the most interesting people on the planet. And it is a time of high drama, and everything matters.