Joan Rivers Quotes

We must know what we think and speak out, even at the risk of unpopularity.

I say what other people won't.

George Carlin is kind of my template now because George Carlin before was straight laced regular comic and he had short hair, a tie, suit, nightclub guy. Then he said screw it, let his hair grow, just started telling what he thought was the truth. So that's what I'm trying to do.

And, because there was an honesty about all that was going on. It connected with the people in the street.

People see truth in my films. That's what they react to, and that's what they relate to.

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

When I'm creating characters, I just want to create characters that I can relate to, and be as honest about them as people as I can be. That's what I want to see when I go to the movies.

You never write down to the people - you write the best you can with the hope that someone else will feel the same way.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

One should never, ever remain silent for fear of complexity,

Anytime I hear songs that are so honest, whether they make the person who's singing it look good or not, there's a level of honesty that resonates with people.

When it was not very comfortable, politically, for me, I said things which lots of people didn't like, some of them may have liked. I said my beliefs, my truth, and my convictions, and that's how I am going to continue to do in the future.

I try to be as honest as I can in writing. That's what ends up translating and relating to people.

As wild and raunchy as Richard Pryor was, people related to his honesty because they found something in their life that they understood.

When I look at material, I get excited by things that are telling the truth because that's what you want to do: tell somebody else's truth.

As I found again and again as a writer, when you're completely honest about something, people respond to that.

Why am I not just some old woman ranting in a room? I think because what I say connects with people's truths.

I suppose my job is to describe spaces that are honest to me. And the goal, I suppose, is that the listener can hear themselves in some way in that song and also, in some way, hear me. And so if the listener is able to identify with my honesty then I'm being the most helpful I can possibly be.

Even if you can't relate to what I'm singing, I hope you can believe in it and see it as something that it is real.

I've found that the more honest and true you are and can talk about a character and people's experiences, it's less ostracizing. It actually has the opposite effect than one would think. It makes the characters and the story more inclusive.

I'm not a gifted storyteller, so I write what I know and hope that honesty resonates with other people's experiences.

No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.

I remember Julianne Moore talking about acting and she said, "I'm just looking for truth. When people watch, they're not looking to see me. They're looking to see themselves." That's one of my new favorite sayings

When you're being real, that's endearing to an audience. When you're not being real and you're making jumps to things that don't really follow how they would in reality, people don't appreciate that.

To me to be a storyteller is you got to be able to speak the truth. You've got to be able to absorb life and take in life and be able to interpret it in a way that anybody in this room could say, "Man, that's my story. I can relate to that."