Garth Risk Hallberg Quotes

When I was an adolescent in England, at school we had to read 'Death of a Salesman.' I remember feeling incredibly moved by the portrayal of these people and the idea with which Miller broached the whole subject of failure or failed systems, or the way that people are crushed by a system in which they find themselves.

It's fantastic to see 'Les Miserables' become the top-grossing film at the U.K. box office.

I've seen everything from 'Wicked' to 'The Book Of Mormon,' and I don't make any bones of the fact that I love both. But 'Les Mis' is not only my favorite musical, but it's also my favorite story. I love the book, which I read as a kid, and I identified so much with Jean Valjean.

In college, I was a huge fan of 'Les Miserables.' I seem to remember that people who were into French literature preferred Hugo's poetry.

The two books I've re-read more than any others are Guenter Grass's 'The Tin Drum' and Victor Hugo's 'Notre-Dame de Paris'.

'Bloodless' reminded me a bit of 'Les Miserables' when it first came out.

I love Victorian novels, the way they capture the nuances of the human condition.

Les Mis' was an amazing experience, to be in the original cast of 'Les Miserables,' and 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' God bless it that was fantastic, at the London Palladium the biggest theatre in London the most successful show that has ever been at the London Palladium, that was fantastic.

If your book is set in the plantation days of the slave-owning South and you write a little romance between two slave owners without acknowledging the system they live, that's a political gesture.

Iris Johansen's lovers weathered the sack of city states and the vagaries of the French Revolution; Judith McNaught's heroines endured amnesia, social ostracism and misunderstandings so big they deserved their own ZIP code.

Get ready for 'Les Mis 2'... I'm playing 'Fat Cosette.'

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.

A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit.

'The Purge' is really about America's crazy relationship to guns and guns gone wild, essentially, and it kind of laid the groundwork for 'Get Out.'

The reason to do any barking - well, the reason for me - is that 'Three Billboards' feels so off about so many things. It's one of those movies that really do think they're saying something profound about human nature and injustice.

People love Jane Austen, even though those books are absurd to us, because we like the clarity of it: we can see very clearly what Elizabeth Bennett has to overcome, what she has to deal with.

I think the best science fiction, especially literature, is political in nature and is often an allegory about something problematic in our world, and it's something that makes the 'X-Men' comics so relevant - they're about xenophobia and prejudice.

Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system.

'Hester Street' was an incredible opportunity for me. That script was such an incredible script.

I recently read a collection of stories called 'Boondock Kollage,' by Regina Bradley. The stories follow multiple characters through the South, through the past and present. I loved reading that book: the first time I read the opening story, I was breathless and incoherent.

I'm obsessed with the Victorian novel. I can't help it. I feel like the novel then was so powerful and agile in ways I'm not sure it is now.

The most brilliant satire of all time was 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. You'll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.

I define 'social thriller' as thriller/horror movies where the ultimate villain is society.

Mr. Clooney has directed six movies; five are set in the middle of the previous century. And 'Suburbicon' clarifies why. Race is a blind spot.

I remember seeing 'Les Miserables' with the original cast - this was in '87 - and I was blown away by it.