Best 38 quotes of Rebecca Miller on MyQuotes

Ambition can be a disease, and it feeds on itself.

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.

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.

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.

Every milieu has something ridiculous about it - film-making, the music world, painting - because people who take themselves seriously become funny pretty quickly.

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.

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

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.

I had a lot of great lakes of ignorance that I was up against, I would write what I knew in almost like islands that were rising up out of the oceans. Then I would take time off and read, sometimes for months, then I would write more of what I knew, and saw what I could see, as much as the story as I could see. And then at a certain point I had to write out what I thought was the plot because it was so hard to keep it all together in my head. And then I started to write in a more linear way.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I never had any desire to become a well-known actress.

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 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.

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.

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

I was always very curious about other people. I would always stare and my mother would say - just please close your mouth!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The quality of life decreases with heightened security.

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

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.

We all have to embrace the idea not to be worried about there being other women in the room. Gay men work with such solidarity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Courtship is romantic. Marriage ... is an act of will," said Pippa, taking a sip of water. "I mean, I adore Herb. But the marriage functions because we will it to. If you leave love to hold everything together, you can forget it.

She's a mystery, a cipher, something nearly extinct these days: a person not controlled by ambition or greed or a crass need for attention, but by a desire to experience life completely and to make life a little easier for the people around her