Uma Thurman, in an interview for NPR’s “Fresh Air,”¹ on learning martial arts for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and 2:

It’s difficult to learn. We forget when we get into our adult lives … we avoid as much stress as we can. We learn how to avoid places where we struggle. And when you have to go back and learn something from the very beginning, it’s humbling because you have to go into that place where you struggle, where you can’t do. You’re hurting and you’re humiliated and you want to stop, and you don’t, and you have to find strength to continue, and then you break through and you learn a little bit more, and you learn a little bit more … so it’s just a constant process of struggle and learning. Really, it just changes your brain. I think [it] made my brain younger for a while, because my brain had to become razor sharp again and go back to a much more flexible state than pregnancy, gardening, and mothering had put me.

1. Edited slightly to remove typical conventions of speech [back]

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