Rebecca Miller Quotes - Page 2

I have a great drive to make things and sometimes I forget to slow down a little.

Novels have become equally important to me as films. I consider myself a storyteller and passionately engaged in both of those disciplines.

I saw Dolce Vita and my mind was blown by it, by the synthesis. I realised I wanted to be a filmmaker and started making films. I was writing screenplays and couldn't get money because my work was so uncommercial.

I've always been fascinated by the way that children and animals suffer stoically in a way that I don't think adults do.

The quality of life decreases with heightened security.

I was an anorexic, beer drinking, class cutting, doodling, shoplifting, skater chick that was into nature, art class, and the beach.

I don't like getting patted down and taking off my shoes at the airport.

I am half-Jewish, and yet really hadn't been brought up within the Jewish faith. So I had felt culturally Jewish, if that's possible, without really understanding it.

I think one of the great joys of being a writer is you can transcend everything, even your own sex, what century you live in, and how you think. I found it quite natural to think as a male because I actually think that as a female, one often thinks in the mind of a male in terms of eroticism. You think about what the other person feels. So it's not that hard to imagine being that person.

Nobody is so weird others can't identify with them.

I would have started writing a lot earlier if I hadn't been [Arthur Miller's daughter].

As if there's a world that exists that you're semi-privy to yet can't quite penetrate - that's how it feels when you're starting a book.

Writing is acting in the sense that you're imagining and inhabiting another. In the book I was trying to get at the root of what true acting is.

I was interested in the mystical element of humor - was humor part of creation? Is God laughing at us, or with us?

Writing is still a bit of a miracle - the whole process: I see the world, filter the world, write down abstract squiggles on a page which somebody is then able to connect with. I'm still amazed by it and think I always will be.

Looking at paintings was a huge part of finding my way into the lush world of the 18th century.

Deirdre Maddon has an extraordinary, almost celestial way of telling a story. There are so many great writers now - although I also want to go back and read all of Dickens again.

I was 100 percent sure when I left university that I was going to be a painter.

That's one thing I find about having children - it does unlock a door that separates you from other women who've had children.