“I just have always wanted to shave my head. I think every woman should just do it once in her lifetime.” Quote by Alexandra Shipp
“I remember one of my writer friends asking me, "Jonestown? Everyone knows the ending. What's new or surprising that you can say about it?" I told him that although people may know that almost one thousand people died in the massacre, they don't know what happens to my five people. Some escaped, some did not.” PeopleRemember Author:Julia Scheeres
“In California, Jim Jones even staged a shooting of himself. The lesson of this was two-fold. One, that he was a god - he could heal himself. He had these magic powers. A large segment of his congregation came from a Pentecostal tradition that believed in faith healing and already believed Jones had the power to cure others. And two, the "shooting" made him seem important. Civil rights leaders were being gunned down - MLK, Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X - and he longed to be considered as heroic and important as they were.” ImportantHealingLeaderMagicTraditionHealCivil RightsHeroicPentecostal Author:Julia Scheeres
“Jim Jones wanted his people to believe the establishment was trying to kill him because whites were threatened by his message of racial equality. He used the incident to close ranks and turn anyone who disagreed with him into a menace. He warned his congregation that a would be assassin might try to infiltrate their church, so they had to prove their loyalty to him by never questioning his orders. Dissenters became traitors.” PeopleTryingBelieveChurchProveLoyaltyQuestioningTraitor Author:Julia Scheeres
“I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time, writing about mass death while I'm growing this precious little life inside me. Here I am, worried about everything I eat and drink and whether I walk past a smoker, and meanwhile I'm writing about an event where almost three hundred children were slaughtered. Most were never identified and are buried in a mass grave in Oakland. It was surreal. But it felt good to give Jim Jones's victims a voice, especially ordinary church members.” GivingWritingChildrenPastChurchDrinkVictimWorriedPregnantSurreal Author:Julia Scheeres
“The beauty of history is that historians have the ability to find patterns, the big picture. When you make a movie, you try to find that. I'm doing in the cinema what historians try to do in their own media.” TryingAbilityHistorianBig Picture Author:Oliver Stone
“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.” WritingTryingBookDifferentActing Author:Rebecca Miller
“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.” PeopleThinkingBookParentGladCuriousDedicatedPersonal Freedom Author:Rebecca Miller
“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.” WritingMindImportantFilmNovelWonderfulDisciplineMarriedCrisisPainterFilmmakerRevelationsStorytellerGet Money Author:Rebecca Miller
“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.” ThinkingWritingKindArtNovelBe GoodIntenseFrustration Author:Rebecca Miller
“With some bands, there's a fear that if people do other things, the band is going to change and not hold it together. That's kind of sad; if you love someone, set them free, right?” PeopleKindTogetherIf You Love Someone Author:Jeff Tweedy