Without any assistance whatever, I founded a school in Weimar in 10 years. Only I could perform certain works with the scanty means that I dared not ask anyone else to work with.
I set out and I said I wanted to just release music, and I don't care how many people heard it at first. And I just wanted to put records out. I knew that.
Yes, it was difficult - making 'The Act of Killing' in particular was a very lonely process. No one really believed in it until very close to the end. But it was also a sanctuary. I was working in obscurity.
If you write fiction, you're by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don't have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you're not lonely anymore.
Wrestling is pretty DIY. I've been doing it for 12 years, completely on my own. It's like being in a band or running a zine - except that I get to kick people in the face.
For a long time, I played for me, for my career.
Acting was always something I pursued by myself. When we were in college, I took an acting class that I was so passionate about and devoted to, but I went to it privately and never really spoke about it. I'd have these ecstatic experiences in, like, a church basement and then never talk about it with other people.
Being the only writer on a successful show is very rewarding.
One of the reasons I became a writer is that, unlike starting a band, directing movies, or acting in a theatrical production, you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself.
I'm in the process of trying to find something that I could do on my own.
Writing is the most solitary of arts.
I didn't really get serious about my own writing until I was convinced it was something that I wanted to do, that I wanted to spend that much time alone.
Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.
He did it alone. We had a cast of a million.
I'm not generally a big solo guy, because I'm not into showing off that way.
Alone-- it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end.
I would say it's not as hard as writing, because when you're a writer, you walk right into the pit all by yourself, but when you're a director, there are at least 80 people who scream, 'Don't do that!' when you make a mistake.
I usually don't work with other people; I do the whole show myself.
My first album, I had to write everything. Nobody was going to send me stuff just because I had a little success.
For me, making films is about trying to work something out by myself in quite a lonely way. I find the whole thing very lonely really.
I think, as a writer, you spend most of your time working on the book alone.
In team sports the athletes were bonded by each other, there was an immense peer pressure to keep going. One dared not miss a practice for fear of letting his teammates down. Every time an athlete thought of getting back into bed in the morning he knew he would have to face the anger of his closest friends. But the sculler had to find motivation entirely within himself. No one else cared.
Movies are collective, cooperative endeavours, which I like a lot. But writing is all up to you, it's what's so scary; it's just you and that page. But I really like it a lot.
Fifteen years old, out in the world, acting was all I had.
The arts were like, there's no opponent. It's just yourself. I'm not saying they don't make the arts a competition with awards and all that, but that's outside the work itself.
