It's very hard to deal with true subject matter, especially when you're writing about such weighty issues.
Money and investing can be complex, confusing, and often boring subjects.
What really excites me is the prospect of making people actually enjoy thinking about difficult topics, to laugh even while seriously engaging these very unpleasant subjects.
To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days.
It's really a lot easier to write about things that are problematic. Who wants to hear how happy you are?
There is no one artform that is going to satisfy all human beings, and there's no one way of talking about difficult stuff that is going to satisfy people, period.
You have two choices, two paths to take as a comedian. You can tackle the difficult subjects and be harsh about it, be brash, be abrasive. But adding hatred to racism is not going to help everybody. So I like to have fun around it.
In the case of 'The Lovely Bones,' I felt that it was subject matter not often dealt with in film, and with a tone that is also rare.
'The Rose Society' was definitely the hardest book I've ever written, because it's so difficult to stay in that dark space.
Topics that are hard to talk about can be difficult for a lot of people, but it's important that we make sure we're addressing difficult topics/issues so it doesn't become the norm.
I am in the bad news business. Seldom do I get to report on puppies, rainbows, or the sounds of children giggling. Well, never.
I've made a career out of being able to talk about difficult things, and that comes from growing up in an environment where nothing was embarrassing.
Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath.
It's a fantastic privilege to spend three or four hundred pages with a reader. You have time to go into certain questions that are painful or difficult or complicated. That's one thing that appeals to me very much about the novel form.
I figure, oftentimes the best way in is through humor, and you can deal with serious situations a lot easier, or at least bring up the conversation.
There are things that aren't supposed to be comfortable to read, because those situations shouldn't be comfortable to discuss, but they still need to be discussed.
Sometimes the very best way to deal with unpleasant things is to depict them in ways that allow people to laugh at them and destroy the power of unsayable things, rather than refusing to acknowledge them.
It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.
Nobody talks about cancer until they have to, and then, it's really all you can talk about.
'Sesame Street's' genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things - death, divorce, danger - in terms that children understand and accept.
That difficult place to put your finger on about the world - it needs to be illustrated.
'Papo & Yo' is an incredibly emotional experience. It shows that video games can talk about anything, even the most personal and sensitive matters.
There are certain topics songwriters stay away from because it's hard to go there. I didn't sit down and go, 'I want to write something about my dad now.'
