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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the duality of experiences shaping one's identity.
Daniel Day-Lewis highlights the contrast between his upbringing in a literary English household and his education in a more challenging environment in Southeast London. This dichotomy allowed him to understand that one can embody different identities and lifestyles, demonstrating the complexity of human experience and the impact of diverse environments on personal development.
Themes
IdentityDualityExperiencesUpbringingContrast
In practice
Example use cases
During a panel discussion on personal growth and identity, this quote can illustrate the complexities of one's background.
More from Daniel Day-Lewis
All quotes →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.
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I suppose it's a very highly developed form of denial, but some part of me completely denies that I'm a performer.
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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
England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
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