Michael Arndt Quotes

Everything I've written has been personal and touched on things that I needed to deal with in my personal life. So I just feel that writing is great therapy, and the best writing comes from truth, and so I mine my life constantly for that.

I read a quote to the effect that we are always writing about ourselves no matter what we're doing. That may be so.

I try as hard as I can to write from a personal place and be genuine.

There's the dual challenge of wanting to speak from an authentic place, and then being able to be honest about it. Even in the most mannered art, I think that's what people value, is a voice that comes from a real place.

If you're really being honest with yourself when you're acting, part of it is touching the real you. You can only separate yourself so much from the character. Those vulnerable moments do touch me.

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves.

Your real feelings are inside you.

That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something.

My interest lies in my self-expression - what's inside of me - not what I'm in.

I like to write when I feel I'm the real me.

Sometimes I was so busy being tuned in to outside ideas, expectations, and demands, I failed to hear the unique music in my soul. I forfeited my ability to listen creatively to my deepest self, to my own God within.

We are all just little dolls of ourselves. Who occasionally pull back the curtains to reveal the real us.

I feel like everything I make is personal to me.

I am excited to show people how, when you get older, you get deeper, you get more raw, you get more honest, and you stop pretending to be the person you think people want you to be. I stopped worrying about what people wanted me to say and just sort of dug deep into my personal arsenal of my mistakes and shameful thoughts.

More and more, people probably associate me in this world of comedy and these confident, brassy, big ladies, which I love, but my insides and who I feel like internally and the kind of work that I hope to continue doing feels very different from that.

I reveal all of myself. I bring all of myself to my roles. You only see me. You don't see anything else but me. That is who's there. They're manifestations of my own self.

I think it will always be me if I always keep a vulnerable side and honest side. My brand has grown because I have done the work. But it will always be me because I will always get down; I will always have those moments.

Do stuff that is true to your own experiences.

One of the other reasons for writing this book [My Beloved World] was to hold on to the person you first met. More of the world knows about me now and follows me in a way that never happened before. I didn't want me, the inside of me, to change. Because I liked Sonia, the Sonia who has been. So another reason for writing the book was to hold on to that - whatever the best in Sonia was, to try to capture it.

You can never be more outside of you, than what's in you

I wonder from these thousand of "me's", which one am I? Listen to my cry, do not drown my voice I am completely filled with the thought of you. Don't lay broken glass on my path I will crush it into dust. I am nothing, just a mirror in the palm of your hand, reflecting your kindness, your sadness, your anger. If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower I will pitch my tent in your shadow. Only your presence revives my withered heart. You are the candle that lights the whole world and I am an empty vessel for your light. Rumi - "Hidden Music

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

Dreams really tell you about yourself more than anything else in this world could ever tell you.

You've got to show your soul otherwise you're just a piece of equipment.

I look for characters that speak to something in me.