Top 100 Tillman's Quotes
#1. Wolfgang Tillman's stunning large-scale pictures, being shown for the first time, were so offhand I failed to see them as art.
Jerry Saltz
#2. There was a group of six women in my household. My mom, aunts and grandma. I watched them in the kitchen.
George Tillman Jr.
#3. My friends and I sometimes laugh at each other that there is so much maintenance of a body. I paid no attention when I was younger.
Lynne Tillman
#4. I shoot a lot of film - that's one of the things I try to do, and it's one of the things I learned how to do with Robert De Niro on 'Men of Honor.'
George Tillman Jr.
#5. When something in a sequence is edited, if you repeat an image, but in a different place, the effect is different. Because the brain is remembering, and the different juxtaposition triggers other memories, thoughts, ideas, and so on.
Lynne Tillman
#6. The sad end he met in Afghanistan was more accurately a function of his stubborn idealism
his insistence on trying to do the right thing. In which case it wasn't a tragic flaw that brought Tillman down, but a tragic virtue.
Jon Krakauer
#7. I don't think that just because a lot of my music has a quieter aesthetic; [it] excludes me from achieving that in a live setting, from being dangerous or something.
J. Tillman
#8. In a practical sense, pain kept me from sitting down as much, so that sometimes I would have to stand to write. Not that I would necessarily have gotten anywhere anyway. But it definitely set me back to be in so much pain.
Lynne Tillman
#9. I wanted to make a movie about a black family in Middle America. I wanted to make a film where everyone can look at them and say, 'This is my family.'
George Tillman Jr.
#10. I don't have the education of an art historian. I've certainly read about art and look at art and have educated myself to some extent. But I'm not a skilled or thorough art historian and I wouldn't call myself an art critic.
Lynne Tillman
#11. I've been writing a lot about my encounter with love. Which is the white stag as far as songwriting is concerned because love songs are so banal, and my experience with love is anything but that.
J. Tillman
#12. It wasn't that I wanted to be an artist. But when I took my first drawing class with the painter Doug Ohlson, I could never finish a drawing.
Lynne Tillman
#13. Reading gave me great comfort and pleasure. When I started being able to write, around seven or eight, I wanted to be able to do that myself, to create that other world.
Lynne Tillman
#14. It's called 'Miles Davis, Prince of Darkness,' and it's about Miles Davis, the genius, and why he was the way he was, and how he changed music so many times. He changed music six times. So, I'm excited about that movie.
George Tillman Jr.
#15. It's my responsibility to make the movie work with the schedule and money we have. It's my job to get the best movie we can do in the time we have.
George Tillman Jr.
#16. You won't rise to the occasion - you'll default to your level of training.
Barrett Tillman
#18. I never paid attention to many of the Nicholas Sparks films. 'The Notebook,' which my wife liked, I felt that Ryan Gosling was a genius in it and Rachel McAdams has this thing about her that you just want to take care of her. I remember that chemistry between them.
George Tillman Jr.
#20. Writing and rewriting are the same thing to me. I don't believe what Allen Ginsberg said that "first thought, then - " I just don't believe that.
Lynne Tillman
#21. Laurel Canyon is kind of grotesque. It's this nature-themed place, and everybody is kind of angry.
J. Tillman
#22. I do think we think repetitively. It's so hard to get certain thoughts out of your head. If you're angry at a friend, you're going to keep going back to that conversation.
Lynne Tillman
#23. It's a vanity to think that a legitimate shamanistic experience can be purchased.
J. Tillman
#24. With sad music, or music that's perceived as sad, there's a sense of solidarity that can be really powerful. My songs are all joyful to me.
J. Tillman
#25. I like the freedom of being able to just use the live show as an opportunity to more so deconstruct what's going on in the album than to recreate it.
J. Tillman
#26. Anger can be a useful emotion. It can help you get out of bed in the morning;
Marie Tillman
#27. It's going back to old school, the way it was done and I'm finding out there is something different, a little interesting. There is something just a little fresh about it because I haven't seen it done like that in a little while. I'm embracing it, you know.
George Tillman Jr.
#28. I love telling stories from a kid's point of view because they don't really see all the obstacles in front of them. They're resilient, and sometimes adults can steal that from them.
George Tillman Jr.
#29. There's a lot of risk in putting what you suspect you really are into your music.
J. Tillman
#30. Sometimes I get into the movies and into the roles; it's hard for me to move on.
George Tillman Jr.
#31. It's true you have to screen out a lot living in the city. I stayed away from New York for a long time after college, and when I was first back, I'd read The Village Voice and feel like I was having a panic attack.
Lynne Tillman
#32. I think it's very hard to reconcile oneself to the notion that it may not matter what you think if you still want to write.
Lynne Tillman
#33. What? An alien. You think I'm from outer space." She snorts in disbelief. "I'm Kelly Tillman, you dumb-ass. From 41 Montana Avenue, Valentine, Texas. What's left of it. I canned seventh grade for a piece-of-crap job with lousy tips and lousy hours. You ain't telling me I'm the outsider here. No way.
Philip Webb
#34. I don't feel any obligation to make my intentions for a song accessible to a listener or an audience. I'm not interested in conveying anything to them so much as what's best for me.
J. Tillman
#35. I think it's important that a director be able to know his characters inside and out.
George Tillman Jr.
#36. I realized that food was actually a metaphor for bringing us all together. It's about us communicating and being like family.
George Tillman Jr.
#37. Defense is on the fly, it's reactive; you have to react to the offense. I have to prevent someone from doing something when they want to do it.
Charles Tillman
#38. You know, there's an economy in lyric-writing that doesn't afford you, or at least me - I usually start off with nine or 10 verses and then boil it down to two or three that are half the length of the original verses.
J. Tillman
#39. I would play my Dungeons and Dragons songs and watch people's eyes glaze over, and then I would start joking around between songs, and all of a sudden people were lighting up and engaging.
J. Tillman
#40. Steve McQueen was the guy who said less, and everything was all behind his words and what he didn't say, and you still felt emotionally connected and rooted behind him.
George Tillman Jr.
#41. Passion is kind of an important word for me, whether it's playing sports or whether it's just living or whatever you're going to do. In my opinion you should be passionate about it or else, why do it?
Pat Tillman
#42. You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic.
Lynne Tillman
#43. Funny is a good foil. Humor is illuminating, and it also gives you power.
J. Tillman
#44. If my peers had a significant impact on my music, my music would probably be a lot more popular.
J. Tillman
#45. As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.
George Tillman Jr.
#46. Life Will Never Be The Same Because There Had Never Been Anyone Like You ... Ever in the World.
Nancy Tillman
#47. And I really haven't done a damn thing.
Pat Tillman
#48. I like to invent the dialogue that I want to have heard.
Lynne Tillman
#49. I call it soul food, and I call it compassion food because it kind of bonds loved ones together. It kept families together for a long time.
George Tillman Jr.
#50. You could say this word is better to use than that word, this sentence is good and that sentence isn't. But you don't determine the value of your work for other people.
Lynne Tillman
#51. [Reality] isn't simply the so-called world that you're in. Your reality is a much larger one that takes in all matter of identification and desires and hopes.
Lynne Tillman
#52. People are less focused on the story, and more on how the story is told.
Lynne Tillman
#53. I guess with the way that I've conducted myself I'm in the logical spot and I'm fine with that. Even my limited interactions with success have left me confused and bummed out, so I don't think the two can co-exist.
J. Tillman
#54. I try to make myself, and subsequently the audience, as uncomfortable as possible, whether it's completely desecrating a song they thought was one thing, or getting too drunk to really do a very good job.
J. Tillman
#55. As a reader myself, which precedes my being a writer, of course, I read in order to enter another world.
Lynne Tillman
#56. I used to get so upset with my father. I'd ask him, 'Why do I have to be around all these women all the time?' But in time, I learned that was an advantage.
George Tillman Jr.
#57. There are lots of unlikable characters in literature. It doesn't mean they're not fascinating.
Lynne Tillman
#58. Whatever the style is, I want to have a sense that the writer is thinking, and really trying to get at something, and that there's a sense of discovery as the writing goes along.
Lynne Tillman
#59. You learn to read in kindergarten or first grade, and suddenly there's this other world that isn't your family or your school or your friends. It's something else.
Lynne Tillman
#60. Energy is what I had lived so long beside. Energy is who I had married - the energy that permeates life, that comes out of every pore and explodes into the world.
Marie Tillman
#61. Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.
Lynne Tillman
#63. Now that I am conscious of the world of chronic pain, when I see somebody walking down the street who's having trouble, I feel a sadness for them. I notice.
Lynne Tillman
#64. I think everyone needs competition in life, whether it be myself, you, the President.
Charles Tillman
#65. Look at politics; they're always in competition over an election, who wants to win. It's just who we are, it's what we do.
Charles Tillman
#67. I think that providing obstructions in the live setting is when you get something that actually means something, as opposed to just aping your way through your greatest hits.
J. Tillman
#68. I think many writers really believe that being published is a traumatic experience.
Lynne Tillman
#69. I like to compete. I think competition brings out the best in anybody.
Charles Tillman
#70. I think it's true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don't understand what people are going through.
Lynne Tillman
#71. When I was working on 'Men of Honor' with Robert De Niro, there's a pipe that he has in the movie, and it took us about six weeks to find the right pipe for him to use and feel comfortable with. It was a great choice, because it was really about what worked with the camera at that time.
George Tillman Jr.
#72. I'm in this business to make films, not get deluded by the system. The system is set up to give you a headache.
George Tillman Jr.
#74. Pat Tillman (for abandoning an incredibly promising football career to give his life for his country).
Peter Boghossian
#75. Several hundred years ago, the only thing that slave families had was cooking and their family meals.
George Tillman Jr.
#76. It's a balance. Like, we are shooting the big car chase at the end and it's me with everybody. And I got my stunt coordinator who shot some stuff and I'm like, you are right next to me, why don't we do it together.
George Tillman Jr.
#77. I definitely think moving around helped shape me and has helped me be a better player.
Charles Tillman
#78. Somewhere inside, we hear a voice. It leads us in the direction of the person we wish to become. But it is up to us whether or not to follow.
Pat Tillman
#80. I was kind of bored playing drums in a band. Which was depressing, because playing in the band was kind of a golden ticket.
J. Tillman
#81. You can't really do anything creative without a source of inspiration.
J. Tillman
#82. Our lives should have depth, which means pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones and not taking the easy way out all the time.
Marie Tillman
#83. I would never want to write a character who was not thoroughly herself or himself. She's a very specific creature in my mind, and she has her thoughts, which range from skin to American history, philosophy, and the arts.
Lynne Tillman
#84. I've never taken the steps to be 'successful': I've never had a manager or signed to a publishing house.
J. Tillman
#85. It's all there-the boredom, the devotion, the horror and even the humor in an industrial war fought on a global scale that we'll never see again. Unit histories just do not get any better.
Barrett Tillman
#86. It's not the writer who determines how good she is anyway. Writers don't determine that. It's readers who determine that.
Lynne Tillman
#87. When I'm choosing things, there's a level of intelligence I want to peel off, whether it's written in terribly simple sentences, whether it's from the point of view of a dog, or a 15-year-old boy.
Lynne Tillman
#88. Instead of saying, ah, I don't have the money, just embrace it and do what we can do. And the scenes that we film and the characterizations in the scenes can come out interesting. And I really feel good about that, going into it.
George Tillman Jr.
#89. In depression, you're flattened. Your energy level is gone. When I'm anxious, I tend to have more energy. But it depends on the nature of the anxiety. The anxiety to finish something would seem to be more productive than the anxiety that says, "You're feeling sick."
Lynne Tillman
#90. He was all of those things, of course, but none of those things.
Marie Tillman
#91. I was like, 'Josh Tillman, you are not a songwriter. You are an ape. Stop thinking of yourself as a songwriter.'
J. Tillman
#92. I'm very interested in animal behavior, and the relationship of human beings to other animal behavior.
Lynne Tillman
#93. I want to see that 'Anita' documentary. I want to see 'Lovelace'; I want to see 'After Midnight,' because I saw the other two and I loved them. I thought the last one was great.
George Tillman Jr.
#94. These guys at Fox knew that as a filmmaker, I could always tell different types of stories and each can emotionally connect to a universal audience.
George Tillman Jr.
#95. I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, "Your characters aren't likeable." It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.
Lynne Tillman
#96. I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all. I'm interested in the ways that I think people want to relate.
Lynne Tillman
#97. The saying "Getting there is half the fun" became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines.
Henry Tillman
#98. Here was the heart of dread. It was not fearsome. It was fetid, noxious, hopeless. A deep and exhausting misery, a crevasse so bottomless that, in the blackness, all one could make out were the contours of despair.
Laura Tillman
#100. Filmmakers are always in a bubble; along with our crew or writer, we don't really get to socialize with other filmmakers, so the great thing about Sundance is you can see many other filmmakers doing the same thing you do.
George Tillman Jr.
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