I can't honestly account for the very personal response that I have to one story and not another, a sense of an orbit, the orbit of a world that draws me as my own life recedes.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of language and structure in communication, shaped by upbringing.
Daniel Day-Lewis reflects on how his background, both in his family and country, has instilled in him an appreciation for the nuances of language and communication. He acknowledges his parents' influence as guardians of the English language, highlighting the significant role that education and environment play in shaping one's linguistic abilities and understanding.
Themes
LanguageEducationCommunicationUpbringingInfluence
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on the value of arts education, I could use this quote to illustrate how language shapes our understanding.
More from Daniel Day-Lewis
All quotes →One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household, but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London, was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film - you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
When I've gone back to work, it's always with that sense of inevitability. That may be a complete delusion, but it's the one that I need to get out of bed and go about my business. That sense that I can't avoid this thing. I better just get on with it.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
I suppose it's a very highly developed form of denial, but some part of me completely denies that I'm a performer.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
I don't torture myself. And I do the work because of the pleasure involved. I'm satisfying a compulsion I find nigh-on irresistible. It's not necessarily because of the work itself. I just feel the need for a period of regeneration afterwards. Like leaving a field fallow when you've grazed too much on it. I feel depleted.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
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If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself.
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Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge
Eleanor RooseveltRead