Sometimes my lyrics are about things that are, well, not the brightest, but I have been working with this outlook for such a long time that it's not dark to me anymore. It's just something that you work through and in the end, it's a lot of happiness.
I've always spent a lot of time in movie theaters, kind of absorbing anything I can. I just love sitting in the dark, and watching the flickering image up there. Just sitting in a movie theater alone is inspiring to me. It takes a pretty bad movie to drain the magic out of that - but Lord knows, those movies exist.
I don't watch any of my own movies, but I love going to the movies. To me, there is nothing more relaxing or gratifying than sitting down in the dark and having some popcorn and watching a great movie.
A lot of stuff is dark in a way, but unless you're really looking at a situation for what it actually is, it's hard to be hopeful - or meaningless to be hopeful about it unless it's actually based in a real possibility.
I mean the reason that I started writing close to home, "Santa Fe," et cetera, was a kind of looking back on past events. I don't know, it's just some of the dark spaces I've been. And it feels like with a music career and whatnot, I've been able to crawl out of those places. So it's interesting to look back on them and try to hold on to the feeling of what you went through.
Social media is important, but it does not bring down governments. Governments can shut down the Internet. Governments can control media access. If they do what the Tunisians did and try and negotiate with the opposition, then the media's still open, the international community can learn what's happening in the country, and then that can provide inspiration. But in mid-2009, the Iranian regime just shut down the Internet. Facebook went dark. Twitter went dark. BBC Persian, Voice of America, Persian News Network all went dark. That was it.
What happened on September 11 wasn't the first act of war, it was the most unspeakable act of murder and terrorism. But it was construed by a very small group of people - there is no army out there in the dark waiting to take over America. It's like being stung by a bee and going out and smashing up a beehive, and thinking you've solved the problem. There are more beehives out there; more bees will come. But they're bees. They're not grizzly bears.
I think the best way to listen to my music is through recording. I would love to be one of those artists where you can go into a coffee shop and watch people pass by and then my music is in their ears. Not necessarily a sensory deprivation thing, but that's cool too. Unfortunately in order to focus on nobody else, you would probably have to go into a dark room and just sit there and listen to it.
Politics right now is in a very dark place, and I think the only place for me is to do what I do - make films, create art, watch it as it evolves. Right now it's like Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall, and a great fall is happening. The behavior seems to be really dumb.
Surfing and music have always been two completely separate things in my life, and a lot of people, especially in the UK, don't really get surfing very much. They think it's the Californian dream. They're like, "Oh, so you're a surfer and you're this and that," and it's like, I go surfing because I like the outdoors. In England it's freezing cold, and it's usually dark and raining and it's the middle of winter, and you do it because it's invigorating. It's like going on a walk in some remote place on the planet. It's really - it's not very glamorous.
Luckily my fans are so lovely and I haven't really had to - what's the phrase? - "Clap back at the trolls?" Every now and then I do get a troll that mentions my skin color and calls me ugly names, though, like "Dark Monkey." Most of the time those people have their pages blocked, or you can't even see their profile picture. I can't focus on that. What I've realized is that I have the power to control how I feel about what they say.
Like everybody else, I've got dark and light, trying to hold onto the civilized part and use it successfully. I'm sure that includes competition, but not in a way that I can recognize. Most of the games I like have more to do with the process of the game or the aesthetics. Racing's really about the aesthetics for me, not particularly the idea of coming in first - though I certainly appreciate a champion, and I like watching people do something really well.
You have to go really dark and deep with yourself and get your hands dirty and go into territories that you don't want to go into and feel things that you don't want to feel, but that's what ultimately pushes out the good and gives you some kind of a message that you can take and channel into something better. That energy's really powerful.
I just think the fact that I was told not to be curious about the dark side, and it was such a religious-heavy upbringing made me interested in goth culture.
I like dark music and I want to wear those goth clothes in school. And I suddenly discovered this whole world of music that I totally loved. The Cure was my favorite band, even though they're not specifically a goth band. I was listening to everything from The Cure to Depeche Mode to Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus and all of that stuff. It was just this release for me. I was able to channel a lot of my loneliness and my feelings of being misunderstood, and I could go into this world where it was okay to be really eccentric.
What you're born with dictates your life. Do you run home after dark? Do you choose an apartment in a questionable neighborhood? I dated a guy a few years ago in California, actually who was, as we say in England, "built like a brick shithouse." He was a lovely guy, but I thought, his arms are as big as my head, he could kill me. I don't think that men would predict the kinds of things that women think about when you are contemplating having a relationship.
The book Forest Dark wants to provoke questions about what is reality and why are we so given to believe that reality is firm and unbendable. There's a whole host of questions that the book is asking about that. Why do we believe that the world is only one way and as we see it? Why are we not open to the ways in which it might be otherwise.
I think that laughter is very close to terror and horror. Maybe that's just me, but that sort of all - over rush that happens when you are either laughing or terrified or weeping...? I think that comedians, in and of themselves, make other people laugh because they aren't necessarily the happiest people in the world. So they know a lot about dark things.
I did a series of dark, desperate women shoots, my exhibitions weren't being well received, and then 9/11 happened, and I said to myself, "Have I gone too far?" Now I look back and realize going out on a complete limb at the time was right - well, people seem to be really responding to my message now, anyhow!
The character is what trips you up - the thing of, "I'm going to get so dark in this character that I'm going to get lost in a character." You can't get lost in a character. You can only think you're lost in a character.
That culture is a a critical resource the organization ignores. Competely mystifying. The organization continues to act as if culture were dark matter, something essentially inaccessible to us. When in fact there is an ancient discipline called anthropology that's pretty good at thinking about it.
I think the important thing about staying creative and staying sharp and original is not to look back too much, and to kind of look to where your vision is going now. But I have felt over the years a definite progression or arc from feeling guilty about what I had done with the first one, because certainly there was all that fundamentalist guilt that came pouring back in. Feeling like I'd done something horrible, "I'm a despicable person and I'm perverse," and all these things, to a sense of the power and the necessity, in a sense, of horror films and dealing with dark material.
I'm not much of a Method actress, so even though my character in The Ghost Writer was quite dark and bad-tempered, I could only do that if I was seeming quite perky.
My first film - a challenging role and completely different from the persona that was created in Italy. I was this super energetic, vibrant, happy, volumed hair, fitted dresses, the whole Italian va-va-voom thing. And the role was a girl that was really provoking society with being unnecessarily violent - just trying to see what people's limits are. It's a really dark tunnel to get to being nasty, being full of hate. When people hate there's a big sadness and rage within them, so it was interesting to go that dark with my first experience.
Faced with the potential of mass atrocities and a call for help from the Libyan people, the United States and our friends and allies stopped Gadhafi's forces in their tracks. A coalition that included the United States, NATO and Arab nations persevered to protect Libyan civilians. So this is a momentous day in the history of Libya. The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted, and with this enormous promise the Libyan people now have a great responsibility: to build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya that stands as the ultimate rebuke to Gadhafi's dictatorship.
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