Jami Gertz Quotes

I do try to write in ways that reflect reality, and I think that reality is rarely simple.

I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.

I don't want happy-face conclusions. I want the truth.

I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.

My responsibility isn't to paint a flattering portrait; my responsibility is to paint a real portrait, a true portrait.

I don't want a picture to look like something it isn't. I want it to look like something it is.

I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.

The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda.

I don't believe in dressing up reality. I don't believe in using makeup to make things look smoother.

When you make a film that is based in reality, reality will come up all around it.

My purpose is to make my narrative as truthful as possible.

I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes.

The best stories come out of the truth.

I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.

Portray the world for what it is, and you will find truth.

The feedback I get is that my books are honest. I don't sugar-coat anything. Life is really hard.

Why do you think the fans like us - why they prefer our street raps over all that phony stuff out there? Because we're telling the real story of what it's like living in places like Compton. We're giving them reality. We're like reporters. We give them the truth.

Tell it like it is.

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.

My idol is Emile Zola. He was a man of the left, so people expected of him a kind of 'Les Miserables,' in which the underdogs are always noble people. But he went out, and found a lot of ambitious, drunk, slothful and mean people out there. Zola simply could not - and was not interested in - telling a lie.

You have to show reality as it is, not as you wish it to be.

I like to portray things as close to the bone as possible.

Whatever you put in your listing, make sure that it's a true representation of the property and it's not dishonest.

I like to keep my films close to reality.

I always say you don't want to get it right, you want to get it true.