Marion Cotillard Quotes

I often draw from people in my own experience to base a character on, going back to my days with Mike Leigh.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

In fact, I had the idea because of Peter Falk. I saw my dad watching a Peter Falk movie and something clicked in my head. I gotta go make a movie for Peter Falk and me.

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.

A lot of times characters are combinations of people I come across in life. I people-watch a lot.

Inspiration is key for me in choosing characters.

People always ask what my inspiration is, and it's never something that's easily explained.

I think 'Dark Blue' came to me while I was doing a project in London. I read it, and the character immediately popped out at me.

I've always found it difficult to start with a definite idea, but if I start with a pond that's being drained because of a diesel fuel leak and a cow named Hortense and some blackbirds flying over and a woman in the distance waving, then I might get somewhere.

You ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty. They come unsummoned, directly, indirectly - I could seize them with my hands - out in the open air, in the woods, while walking, in the silence of the nights, at dawn, excited by moods which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound and roar and storm about me till I have set them down in notes.

I've always really been interested in the Pygmalion myth and both what it has to say about creativity and what it has to say about relationships between men and women. I'd been thinking about what I would want to do with that if I was going to write on that theme, and one morning I woke up and Calvin and Ruby Sparks were in my head.

The things I see every day inspire my sound and lyrics, like certain people and situations that stick out in my mind. There are also certain musicians I love whose music and styles inspire me.

I had the idea of a boy who was a wizard and didn't yet know what he was. I never sat down and wondered, "What shall I write about next?". It just came, fully formed.

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.

The character of the monkey just grew from something out of his face and my granddad's personality. They fused, and that's what I ended up with! The monkey belonged to a friend of mine, and I saw that it had such a little beguiling face and it grew from there.

Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life.

I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.

I have a list of ideas that I want to do for my art series, but I'm always trying to figure out what's going to work. Ever since I was in art school, I would read and get ideas. Sometimes the photograph sparks an idea in me, and I continue in that direction.

I get passionate about certain subjects, and then I'll write a whole play around it.

I always get inspiration from whatever characters say about my character.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.