Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I really want to do film, but I want to do the right film. The truth for me is that I'm really driven by stories. So there are stories I want to tell, and if it's a good story then I want to do it, whatever genre it is.
I'm just looking as always for something that's stimulating and I hope to find a good story that's a challenge, whether it's big or small. Or that it finds me. I don't have like a career plan. Maybe I should, but I don't.
'Downton Abbey' didn't have the impact it had just because it was a good story about people. It was something about that period and that world that was fascinating to people on a level that wasn't just as an entertainment.
As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.
It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.
It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.
A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.
Hubspot's leaders were not heroes but rather a pack of sales and marketing charlatans who spun a good story about magical transformation technology and got rich by selling shares in a company that still has never turned a profit.
From earliest times, humans - explorers and thinkers - have wanted to figure out the shape of their world. Forever, the way we've done that is through storytelling. It is difficult to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Life on earth is such a good story you cannot afford to miss the beginning... Beneath our superficial differences we are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings.
You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved, because the movie is almost always bad when you do that. Your job No. 1 is for it to be entertaining, and if it's inspiring, that is great, too.
I'm drawn to a good story, really, as I hope most people are. For me, it's the story that's going to stay with you eventually, not necessarily the genre. I go to watch a film because of the story, not because it was a Western or a comedy.
All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.
You know, I remember watching Morgan Freeman when he did the two Alex Cross movies, and he's so confident that he's going to knock the scene dead. And I'm really confident that I can tell a good story now, so I just don't worry about things.
You look at the part in '12 Years A Slave,' you finish that script - I mean, it's a powerful story. You go, 'Man, I have to play a bad character in this.' And then you go, 'Well, do I want to play a bad character and contribute to a good story?'
I found out a long time ago that if I didn't have a good story for a song, I could just make one up! Now it seems over half the stories in my show are made up. The funny thing is, those seem to be the ones that resonate the most with the audiences.
When I sit down to write, I don't think, 'OK, what is the next David O. Russell film I can write, or what is Harvey Weinstein going to want to buy?' Or even, 'What are filmgoers going to want.' I try to think, tell a good story. Just do what you do.
I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.
As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.
I am fortunate enough to have worked on, and continue to work on, evolutionary movies in all formats from just simple good story telling, which still matters most of all, to CG movies to tent-pole size 3D movies, and genre 3D movies like 'Piranha 3D.'
To me, it's about good work, a good story, and tastefully done. There's so many stigmas - oh, you're on the small screen or you do films or you do reality. It's about the project and not the medium on which it's delivered. It's the story you tell, period.
Amateur wrestling, you can go by instinct. Pro wrestling, you have to memorize, and you have to go by what moves you said you were going to do. Sometimes you have to feel the crowd and do the moves at the right time and know the timing and tell a good story.
I would love to work with anybody who has a good story to tell - Patrick Graham, Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Kashyap, Neeraj Ghaywan, Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson. I don't know why I was not considered for that Indian guy's part in 'The Grand Budapest Hotel.'
I grew up reading 19th-century novels and late Victorian children's books, so I try for a good story full of coincidence and error, landscape and weather. However, the world was radically changed during my lifetime, and I tell of that battering as best I can.
I think in telling a good story there has to be ups and downs with any character, and you can't just have everything go swimmingly and you can't just have characters who are supposed to be in a romantic relationship just getting into an argument every episode.
Audiences want great story telling; it's why white people watch my show 'Black in America.' It's why black people watch 'Latina in America.' All of that is statistically shown and proven but it was because it was good story telling about people who were outsiders.
I always try to tell a good story, one with a compelling plot that will keep the pages turning. That is my first and primary goal. Sometimes I can tackle an issue-homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty-and wrap a good story around it.
Any good story can galvanize a person, make him/her think about things a different way, reassess their own motives and needs, but that's never my intent. That's an unintended consequence of me just trying to entertain, to write what we used to call 'ripping yarns.'
Great directors turn in mediocre work, and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know. You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.
When I read a good story, I often start thinking, 'Should I live my life according to what this character chooses and values?' It makes me think. I feel like I grew up to be a more mature person while thinking about character development in these fictional situations.
Many critics, when trying to praise a short-story collection, will say that it has the heft and scope of a good novel. But for me, one of the highest compliments you can pay a novel is to say that it has the rich texture and eloquent detail of a good story collection.
If you find a story that everybody likes and everybody relates to in some way, then you know you have a good story. But if you're telling a story and all the women are going, 'I'm checked out of this, I just don't really care,' then you're going to have some problems.
Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.
You have very short travel blogs, and I think there's a split among travel writers: the service-oriented writers will say, 'Well, the reader wants to read about his trip, not yours.' Whereas I say, the reader just wants to read a good story and to maybe learn something.
I'm just trying to write a good story, strictly from imagination. People just think it's random, they don't see the rewriting, phrasing of characters, choosing the words, bringing the world to light in which the characters live in. That creates an illusion that this is real.
Jewish, black, Filipino, whatever the specificity is, it's specificity that makes a good story. And I think people are tired of seeing the same old shtick on network television. It's just a group of white people hanging out talking about their jobs. Who cares? We've seen that.
I have no problems with remakes, and I think it's interesting. I mean, coming from the theater, we've been remaking 'Hamlet' for a hundred years, so it's no problem to me at all. A good story can be told in many different ways in different places; I just think it's interesting.
Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point - in terms of character development - as you can.
I probably get a deeper satisfaction of having taken a very good photograph than of having written something very good, a very good story. Maybe it's because the element of magic is so present in a good photograph - luck and magic, but also hard work and being ready and all that.
That's what was so amazing about 'Mulan.' Here is this story with all Chinese characters, and yet so many people related to her character and loved the story. So I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people, it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is.
There are so many different narrative traditions across the world, and each of those traditions has evolved dramatically over time. Once I understood that, I felt truly free; I could write and invent the way I wanted to because there never has been only one way to tell a good story.
I'm very happy to be a part of a very successful piece of art, as the 'Saw' films have been. One gets into this to participate. It's the coming together of a good story. So, that aspect of it has been just splendid. It really has nothing to do with me or my popularity. I'm fascinated.
Brainstorming, for me, takes place in my bed at night between the time I turn out my lights and I finally fall asleep. It is not a very violent storm, but what's happening is I am just thinking about different ideas and maybe things I've seen that day that I think might make a good story.
I have yet to meet very many people in the press who are really, truly interested in writing a good story or getting at the truth. Most press people, when they come into an article, have an angle that they want already, so they need points to support that angle, whatever the angle may be.
In the past, if you did film, you couldn't do stage, and if you did film, you certainly didn't do television. You had to pick what you wanted to be. Now it seems like we can bounce around, not only between genres, but between mediums, and I like that. I like change and I like a good story.
My name is Bruce Feiler, and I'm an explainaholic. I first heard this word used to describe Isaac Asimov, and I knew instantly that I suffered from the same condition. It's the incurable desire to tell, shape, share, occasionally exaggerate, often elongate, and inevitably bungle a good story.
I never look at twists as a way to trick the audience. Obviously, I think a good story has surprises and unexpected turns, and you always want to do that with an audience. But it has nothing to do with conning them or making them believe so strongly in one thing and then kind of going the other way.
Writing 'Hoop Roots' was a substitute or a surrogate activity. I can't play anymore - my body won't cooperate - so in the writing of the book, I was looking to tell a good story about my life and about basketball, but I was also looking to entertain myself the way that I entertain myself when I play.
Part of success is having a good story, and as a journalist, I totally understand. But it meant that my many, many years of focus and hard work got kind of prepackaged into a Cinderella story. I'm super grateful that it happened, but it left me feeling like I never got to be a full human in the experience.
I think a good story can do as much as a novel; not the exact same thing, of course, but just as much artistically. They're different beasts, but to tackle an expansive country like the United States, you're either going to write a big novel, or go in to various points on the map and write stories or poems.