We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy: characters our audience will care for and, as a result, will care about what happens to them and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character's journey.
As a child, I remember I always wanted to make my parents happy and give them everything in their lives.
We want to excite the world about what's out there. But we don't want them to say, 'Oh, there are lots of sites in Egypt - let's loot.'
Initially, I wanted to do films with A-list actors when I was struggling. I was hoping that I could also get that platform where I'm launched with Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan or Aamir Khan... and with them my career could also start, but it didn't happen. And then came 'Queen.'
No matter how heinous someone's behaviour, if you make them a comic character, you can't expect people to hate them.
Too many children today are trapped in schools that don't work for them.
'The Wall' is a reaction to 'Edge of Tomorrow,' where I was like, 'I don't need time travel and aliens to take a hero and pin them down in an impossible situation. I can do it in a much simpler way.' And that was 'The Wall.'
Americans different in some maybe thoughts or emphasis still have the same ideas. They want a government that lets them be free, that leaves them alone, that doesn't interrupt and interfere with every aspect of their life, that lets them go to work and keep more of what they've worked hard to have.
We are committed to raising our children as Jews. I knew that it had to start with me at a greater level, at a deeper level, if it was going to be a meaningful example to them.
I always like to remind myself that the most honorable people of all are not those who never make mistakes, but those who admit to them when they do and then move on and do their best to right the wrongs they have made.
If I have to pick one story that most influenced 'The Hunger Games,' it would be the Greek myth of Theseus, which I read when I was about 8 years old. In punishment for past deeds, Athens periodically had to send seven youths and seven maidens to a labyrinth. In the maze was this Minotaur, and it would eat them.
We reasoned that the men would find it difficult to vote against the women in their home states when a woman was sitting with them making laws.
I write every day, including weekends. For writers, there are no weekends. It's just that your family is around, looking mournful, wondering when you're going to pay attention to them.
If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
I think that artists, at a certain point, can either become defiant and say that the audience is wrong, readers don't get them, and they're going to keep doing it their own way, or they can listen to the criticism - and not necessarily blindly follow the audience's requests and advice.
Daydreaming allows you to play out scenarios where you miraculously save the day. You play out scenarios in your head that are kind of crazy, and then you personally, heroically resolve them.
You have to make them laugh and then make them listen.
You do get fond of your characters. Handing them on is like giving a child to a nanny.
During the game, there has to be a moment where you have to set the tone. You have to let them know that you're a physical player.
Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear to be bright until you hear them speak.
I wrote 'Ohio,' and it was really awesome to be able to share that with my fans because a lot of them can relate to not having a parent in their life. It's really one of my favourite songs to sing live.
Well, the responsibility for maintaining a reliable transmission grid is one that's shared by an awful lot of players who have a role in the grid: Companies that either generate and transmit energy or just play the role of being the transmission systems or monitoring them.
Communism counts its opportunities in terms of decades - not of weeks. Its means of aggression consist not only of nuclear weapons and missiles with enormous boosters, and not only of spies, agents and terrorists, but of great masses of men and women, deluded by a common ideology which inspires them with a false hope.
I don't have any siblings, but I have best friends that I have known since kindergarten that I'm protective of. If they call me and tell me someone was mean to them at school - I want to go to school and be mean to that person and try to stand up for them.
I find talented, driven, boundlessly ambitious people and help them solve problems that will hopefully improve the lives of millions. Sometimes this means investing in startup founders. Other times, it involves helping organize and fundraise for charity or politics.
To recognize yourself in a character onscreen, and to connect with them, you gotta recognize their flaws; they gotta feel like a real person.
Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less casually, with our pesticides and wires and machinery.
I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head.
It's my job to motivate the audience to believe. I have to get them to suspend their judgment in favor of involvement.
Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or worth worrying about if they evade one or are slow in coming. All that is really worth while is action - faithful action, for the world, and in God.
Whatever my father did were great films. I don't want to remake any of them.
I'm essentially a jeans girl, and I dress them up or down with accessories. For me, it's ultimately about a great pair of shoes.
In high school, I had two friends that were suffering from cancer. I would go and sing for them while they were in hospital, and I sang at their services after they passed.
The military is very constitutionalist, and I have my faith in them and in the cooler heads of the people.
Everyone has a really short attention span, and you have to bombard them with content, content, content.
Novelists go about the strenuous business of marrying and burying their people, or else they send them to sea, or to Africa, or at the least, out of town. Essayists in their stillness ponder love and death.
