There is nothing permanent except change.
I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader.
I believe there's fate, and then you have personal choice. I believe we have the ability to change our fate.
In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?
Without being aware, I think I was being indoctrinated into what was called Vitalism, the idea that what makes life worth living, the good life, consists of accepting challenges, solving problems, discovery, personal growth, personal change.
I sort of have this feeling about change in general. We can make baby steps on a macro level. We can try to shift policy, voting and changing who's in office. But we can make huge, sweeping changes on a personal level and in your immediate circle, or just the people around you.
For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.
Instead of me keeping my art a personal thing, we can use it to save lives, change lives and inspire.
I start with an idea or a problem or a conflict, or even a situation that might be pertinent to the lives of young people, then the characters grow from that point. I try to make strong characters that change and develop and learn from their mistakes.
The vast majority of large scale change efforts fail. Which means that the probability that you have actually experienced a failure, and your people know that and are pessimistic, therefore, about trying something again, is very high.
If, as is natural, you focus on the corruption and on those threatened institutions that are trying to prevent change - even though they don't really know what they're trying to prevent - then you can get pessimistic.
Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are men at the top of their game, and Jackson especially is going to change the nature of film-making.
When I was a little girl, about eight, I remember going into the Body Shop - that was my first introduction to campaigning. There would always be a petition at the till about fair-trade or stop testing on animals, and the message was: get involved and make change.
This change to a higher phase of alert is a signal to governments, to ministries of health and other ministries, to the pharmaceutical industry and the business community that certain actions now should be undertaken with increased urgency and at an accelerated pace.
One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.
No, I don't regret anything at this point. That may change on the next phone call, but at the moment I don't regret anything.
The Google Voice service is a lifesaver for me. My actual phone number changes a lot, so having a canonical Google Voice number that doesn't change - it's actually my same number from high school - is indispensable.
Whenever I deal with heartbreak, my therapy is to listen to all the love songs I can to purge my system - and I change my phone number so I won't be tempted to call or keep expecting him to call back.
I change my phone number, and with my soul shrunken by terror, I make the decision never to see Pablo Escobar again in my life. Overnight, I have stopped loving him.
I literally change my phone number 10 times a year and I don't ever save my contacts.
