A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.
Reading 'Youth in Revolt' might have ruined my career because suddenly I wanted to abandon all the emotional truth of something and just go out far on a literary limb with completely implausible things that relied completely on voice and humor. And what saved me is realizing that I couldn't do that very well.
When you're trying to paint a portrait of a very specific world, you're trying to show what makes the world different. So, sometimes it means exaggerating certain kind of aspects, but I don't think it's that important or it's that much of an issue as long as you get an emotional truth across.
When you look at the history of slavery in the United States, and you see the impact that 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had, culture sometimes is the only way that we can put people's eyes on an emotional truth and make them feel why something has to change.
I write so that people will read what I write. I don't want to write a book that a thousand people read, or just privileged people read. I want to write a book whose emotional truth people can understand. For me, that's what it's about.
Readers embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.
I would never make a purely autobiographical movie, because it would be incredibly boring. But I always bring something. It's usually some emotional truth I've experienced, like in 'Get Him to the Greek,' the relationship between Jonah Hill and Elisabeth Moss, I had certainly had that kind of relationship with a girlfriend.
I love historical fiction because there's a literal truth, and there's an emotional truth, and what the fiction writer tries to create is that emotional truth.
The way I navigate scenes is through what I perceive to be the emotional truth of the character: what he wants from moment to moment.
In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.
The theatre is supremely fitted to say: 'Behold! These things are.' Yet most dramatists employ it to say: 'This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.'
The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.
Women's empowerment for me means knowing your rights, having the facts, knowing the truth about what is happening out there, here in our own country and the condition of women throughout the world.
I've never sat down with the intent of trying to shock or anything like that; it just so happens that the sense of humour I enjoyed watching as a kid is the type of humour I try to emulate as an adult. It's not a decision. It might sound a bit wanky, but it's the truth.
The truth is that I've always wanted to be an actor, ever since I was a child. I used to see these English movies which were shown to us in our school every Saturday, and then I used to enact the hero's part in my head.
Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
The reason that I'm here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That's my truth.
Scott Walker is going to tell people the truth - not with bombastic and self-congratulatory language, but in that endearing Midwestern way.
I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God.
Ultimately, education in its real sense is the pursuit of truth. It is an endless journey through knowledge and enlightenment.
