Harvey Pekar Quotes

Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.

I'm a songwriter, and people will tell you the greatest stories about their lives, whether you want to hear it or not.

As an actress, I'm drawn to emotion and expressing the human condition in all its forms, and I'm fortunate to have thoughts and feelings at my fingertips.

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.

The characters are whole, real people to me that I'm getting to know, and since real people are all flawed, so are my characters, I hope.

Know that there is so much more to you than your body. It's not just about perfecting the steps; you must trust your instincts to tell deep, emotional stories through the steps that you are performing.

I wanted each of my books to be very different from the others, each to be special and uncategorizable, and I knew I could only do that a few times before I was in danger of repeating myself.

I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.

They say, 'Write what you know.' What I know isn't cheerleader; it has a little bit of teeth to it.

I'm not on a record like some rapper trying to boast about my clothes or where I'm from. I'm creating stories, experiences, the way places make me feel, the way a person makes me feel.

In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up.

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.

You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you're singing it from someone else's angle. But it's always from me. It's just a new way of framing it.

I love artists that just do what they do with so much passion and emotion.

I never felt a feeling that I knew or could know to be unlike the feelings of other people. I never consciously thought, except after patterns that the world or my fellows set for me.

My advice would be to write what is most personal and specific to your experience or your life. And your voice will emerge and because of its specificity, it will be universal.

I always prefer to write songs about emotional situations and heartbreak because I like getting into the character.

It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing.

I think that we're all, as human beings, so limited. If we want to write about ourselves, that's fairly easy. And if we write about our friends or our families, we can do that. But if we want to project ourselves somewhere beyond our personal experience, we're going to fail unless we get that experience or we borrow it from others.

Of course, I want to look the best I can, but I am playing characters that should match my age, and the women and the material that I am interested in are usually going through something. I have to be able to live in my face and tell the story of the character I've taken on.

We've always written from personal experiences.

Most of the things I sing in my songs, I've lived.

I like to tell my own story using my personality and my insight, the way I see things.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever - I rap about it.

The most powerful, most insightful, and most important part of my music is honesty and inclusiveness with my fans - giving them as deep a story as I can give them.