Quotes About Narrative

Mr. Rogers would not make a good protagonist of a narrative film. He's without conflict, he's too far along on his journey toward enlightenment to be a good protagonist. Our protagonists have to be struggling with demons in a certain way.

There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on, this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't.

Very often with an American movie, the end is very happy and you just feel good when you go out. When you go to a French movie, it's kind of like, oh!, and you can't go out; you're stuck in your chair. It goes so deeply inside of the heart.

I hate it when I'm reading a comic, and the dialogue looks like stickers stuck on top to explain what's going on. For me the best is when your eye goes in a certain point and moves through the composition and then springs out on the dialogue, or gets confused in the image and then goes to the dialogue for an explanation.

I guess I've always been kind of obsessed with food. I always liked drawing food, and I always liked stories - I think I probably just read somewhere that stories are better if someone's eating in them. I don't know where that came from, but it really stuck, and I always try to put food in.

I don't think the narrative I was stuck in - the 'black' designer category - was going to go away anytime soon.

Though Nathalie Dupree did not remember much about my presence in her class, it marked me forever. I remain her enthusiast, her evangelist, her acolyte, and her grateful student. She taught me that cooking and storytelling make the most delightful coconspirators.

I believe that everyone has a story, and it is important that we encourage all students to tell theirs.

I have nothing against these big CGI movies, but there are not enough of the other ones - the ones with stories about character that have a beginning, a middle and an end. I said that to a couple of studio heads and they said, 'That's novel.'

And I like being able to go back and forth, and I don't really care if it's a small budget or big budget or studio or independent, as long as it's got a story that's compelling and there's enough money to make the picture.

The studios aren't lining up to make films about black protagonists, black people being autonomous and independent.

The film industry is driven by male narrative. Heads of studios are often men, teeming with male executives everywhere you look, and so the narratives we have the screenwriters usually for male leads. Women tend to be second string: the girlfriend of, the secretary who becomes.

It's very rare for the Internet to have a successful narrative show like 'MyMusic.' It's really a case study for what is the future of the sitcom.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

There has to be the right pacing of images to tell the story. I'm always stunned at how little you can put in.

Music, dance sequences, action stunts are key parts in a commercial film but there has to be relatable content as well.

I prioritise story over science, but not at the expense of being really stupid about it.

It's not stupid TV, it's not a reality program. It actually is complex. There's many layers to 'Heroes.'

It's good for a story to have a strong style.

Do the story in the way it really demands to be done, which may mean using several different styles or only one style; but it's still about respecting the story.

As far as what I do, my value as a writer is certainly not to try to recapitulate a 19th century form. Certain styles of narrative don't conform to my style of experiencing the world.

The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or stylish writing. Some of my favorites are 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy, 'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides, 'The Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri, and 'Blindness' by Jose Saramago.

It's much easier to make a movie with kind of stylistic pyrotechnics because you can hide behind that if there's a gap in the story.

Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.