Variant: I've always loved the idea of not being what people expect me to be.
“I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”
“I was mad and the idea of controlling my life to get what I wanted was like candy to me.”
The Confession of My Crimes
Context: I was mad at God, I didn’t LIKE God because of how I perceived Him, and the stuff I read on Satanism said two things that appealed to me. #1 — it offered freedom, and #2 — it promised power to control my life, and others. I’d been carted all around the state and Colorado all my life, slapped, smacked, hit, and had whatever I wanted ignored. I was mad and the idea of controlling my life to get what I wanted was like candy to me. Plus I looked at the way everyone around me lived and the stuff I read in the Satanic Bible in principle was lived out in lifestyle by Mom and Dad and everyone else I knew. No one was a real Christian. We didn’t go to church. We didn’t talk about God. … What was the point of pretending to serve God when we lived like Satanists? Satanism taught me that I should make my own rules to live by in life, and that’s just what everyone I’d grown up around did, so I got very involved in Satanism. I truly thought it was an honest way to live, and the rituals of it would enable me to control my life. Even then I didn’t want to kill anyone. That desire didn’t start until later.
“I want to make people feel better, whether it’s myself, or a friend, or whoever.”
On her song "Me and You" on Volume Two (2010), in an interview with Evan Schlansky in " On Record : Zooey Deschanel of She & Him http://www.americansongwriter.com/2010/03/on-record-zooey-deschanel-of-she-him/" at American Songwriter (18 March 2010).
Context: I think a lot of what motivates me songwriting-wise is — this might sound silly — but, when I listen to a song that I love, it kind of makes me feel better. I think that’s the impetus behind everything I write; I want to make people feel better, whether it’s myself, or a friend, or whoever. I don’t know how to say this without sounding corny or banal, but I know a lot of people who are very hard on themselves. So this is sort of a cheerleading lullaby.
As quoted in "Salman Rushdie talks with Terry Gilliam", in The Believer (March 2003) http://www.believermag.com/issues/200303/?read=interview_gilliam
Context: Well, I really want to encourage a kind of fantasy, a kind of magic. I love the term magic realism, whoever invented it — I do actually like it because it says certain things. It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying "That's the world." And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things.
On how he would like to be remembered (1994)
Context: Oh, I don't know — that's a hell of a question — I don't tend to look at my stuff that way. I just look at it a book at a time. Something like the Amber books are in a different class. I try not to anticipate. I don't know what I'll be writing a few years from now. I have some ideas — I have lots of different things I want to try. I almost don't really care what history thinks. I like the way I'm being treated right now.
“I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.”
Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
