Quotes About Experience

I suppose I am more comfortable with jazz because I have been playing it that much longer, and also because classical music is a much more disciplined genre.

Most of my stories, if not all of them, have some basis in real life. That's the kind of fiction I'm most interested in. I suppose that's one reason I don't have much respect for fiction that seems to be game playing.

I suppose because I do and can work in the theatre, I don't see work as closing down as an older woman.

Every music - except dance music, which is for dancing, I suppose - is for the spirit of the human being, and not for the body.

I suppose with any character that you play you always bring your personal experience to it. You always bring people that you know or that you've met and sort of - this is what I do, I mean, I don't know what anyone else does - but people that you know or that you've met that have affected you in certain ways, you bring into it.

I suppose one has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.

What's an expert? I read somewhere, that the more a man knows, the more he knows, he doesn't know. So I suppose one definition of an expert would be someone who doesn't admit out loud that he knows enough about a subject to know he doesn't really know how much.

I suppose I'm most influenced by any good, commercial writer. I learn from everyone.

I suppose the most fun I had was on the second film.

I'd be perfectly happy never to have to answer anything again about how I work with Ethan, or whether we have arguments, or... you know what I mean? I've been answering those questions for 20 years. I suppose it's interesting to people.

I suppose I learned organization from Altman.

I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.

I was born abroad, but my parents were both English. Still, those few years of separation, and then coming back to England as an outsider, did give me an ability to see the country in a slightly detached way. I suppose I was made aware of what Englishness actually is because I only became immersed in it later in life.

I suppose I was much more serious-minded in the '70s and '80s.

I grew up with my stepfather in Brighton, but I did spend a lot of time with my natural father, and I was loved by both, so I suppose the advantage of this was that I wasn't bound by one set of experiences; I always had an alternative.

When I was younger, I suppose I was interested in checking out as much about writing as I could: bad, weird, irritating, even things not-to-my-taste. Now I am less open. I will decide after a few pages if I want to stay in the world of the book, and if I don't, I put it down. I have less time left.

I suppose there are times when I can't believe that I've lived the way that I have and done the things that I've done. Life's a joke anyway. It's all ridiculous. It's all so short.

Most of my favorite writers are over forty, and so I suppose I'll only name a few of the writers whose work I find myself constantly returning to: Edward P. Jones, Marilynne Robinson, Kazuo Ishiguro, V. S. Naipaul, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth.

I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age.

I suppose I'm really interested in theatre that provides an intensity of experience on another level.

Acting is about communicating what it is like to be human: the pain, the laughs, the misery, the joy. I suppose I am searching to have it all.

We live in a fast-paced culture where we're asked to make snap decisions all day long, so I suppose cash-point donations feed into the immediacy of our life experience. So it's a great idea. But I think it needs careful handling.

It's often said that everybody has a story to tell, and I suppose that's true, but the problem is that most of them aren't worth telling.

It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you.