Latest Rebecca Miller Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• When I left university I was sure that I was going to be a painter. Then I had a crisis, a revelation. 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 got married and started writing fiction. What was wonderful is that it gave me my freedom because no-one can tell me I can't work. Novels have become equally important to me as films. I consider myself a storyteller and passionately engaged in both of those disciplines.

  Rebecca Miller

  Writing, Discipline, Mind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• One of the things that's good for me is that I can go from one art form to another. Because I think if I had to write another novel now I would really not be good in my head anymore. It's too much. The frustration is so intense of knowing that this structure is right around the corner. Writing is a particular kind of frustration.

  Rebecca Miller

  Art, Writing, Frustration

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self. We learn how to be people from other people. Then you think - what's personal freedom? Is self-creation possible? This book is dedicated to a friend of mine who really did re-create herself. I didn't do that - I stayed in the circus and am a circus performer like my parents were. I did what I was raised to do - I'm glad I did but I'm fascinated by the people who managed to do something else. I was always very curious about other people.

  Rebecca Miller

  Book, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm really interested in the minutiae of different tones and what that explains - how people's backgrounds are reflected in minute details of how they interact. It's true that I'm hypersensitive to all that. 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.

  Rebecca Miller

  Book, Writing, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Every work coming from the creator is about getting the demons out, and each character in those stories had a different personal crisis to get through.

  Rebecca Miller

  Character, Different, Stories

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

• The script is the musical score, and everyone has to play off that score. Even I have to interpret it. The producers are there to eliminate obstacles to that interpretation.

  Rebecca Miller

  Play, Musical, Scripts

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

• There is a magic thing called 'tone' in a film, that the director must master and maintain.

  Rebecca Miller

  Magic, Directors, Tone

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

• At best, I think of a director as a magnet. You get all the metal fillings in all the individual actors and crew, and get those filings moving toward your magnetic direction.

  Rebecca Miller

  Moving, Thinking, Directors

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

• In a way, after you're done directing there is a sense of amnesia that washes over you, you can't exactly remember how you did things. It's a zone, just like an athlete, when they can't remember what they did, but somehow got it done.

  Rebecca Miller

  Athlete, Over You, Done

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

• You work with each individual actor as you perceive their needs to be. It's something that you've figured out in the weeks of pre-production.

  Rebecca Miller

  Needs, Actors, Week

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

• It is really hard when the actor you pictured can't do the film.

  Rebecca Miller

  Actors, Film, Hard

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

• In a way, a lot of my work is in the re-writing once it is cast, as I adapt to the rhythms of how the roles are played out by the actors.

  Rebecca Miller

  Writing, Roles, Actors

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

• I think it's very important to keep being frightened - if you're not frightening yourself, you should take a break. You need to keep experimenting. You also need to take time - that's how you do good stuff - layering and depth of knowledge.

  Rebecca Miller

  Thinking, Important, Depth

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Writing is a particular kind of frustration, which is why when I was making the structure for the novel I visualized it for myself with a color-coded board so I could see it.

  Rebecca Miller

  Writing, Frustration, Color

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I do think it is a kind of illness in the sense that it sets you apart, it injects you with an endless, unslakable thirst to keep making the thing. The artist has to voluntarily use themselves endlessly.

  Rebecca Miller

  Thinking, Artist, Use

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• One of the things that's good for me is that I can go from one art form to another.

  Rebecca Miller

  Art, Form, I Can

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  Rebecca Miller

  Discipline, Important, Film

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  Rebecca Miller

  Littles, Sometimes, Forget

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  Rebecca Miller

  Painter, University, Percent

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Rebecca Miller

  Writing, Mind, Synthesis

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Rebecca Miller

  Stories, Want, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I was trained to look at colour, edges, to see negative space. I honestly think my greatest influence as a writer is from Cubism - the idea of a multi-faceted, multi-perspective way of looking at things.

  Rebecca Miller

  Thinking, Ideas, Space

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  Rebecca Miller

  World, Way, Painting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Rebecca Miller

  Writing, Thinking, Miracle

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self.

  Rebecca Miller

  Self, Essence, Answers

  Source: www.guernicamag.com