Quotes About Narrative

What should be driving the conversation is: What's the story? What's the movie about? Is it a compelling story? And if it is, then you make it regardless of the color of the people behind or in front of the camera.

It's not easy to tell a story about writers and make that feel like a complete story and an interesting story.

I like stories where there's a center that's mushy and complicated.

As far as how I grew up, and who is in my life, it's still a very complicated thing as far as how I want to get that across.

My private joke about 'Luke Cage' is that it's a bulletproof version of 'Lemonade,' and that, essentially, it's a concept album that has a video component.

I've been drawn to sports stories that have an emotional component to it. I'm happy to get a chance to tell a few.

When I compose for any film, I always work with the story in mind.

I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level.

What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.

Ruthless concern with story is what I learned in television.

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

Film is very condensed.

All confessions are Odysseys.

I don't start with the characters. I start with the series of events that will provide the conflict and how it can be resolved. Characters are incidental.

Everyone always says that conflict is drama, and I agree, but I also don't think you need drama everywhere. Or conflict everywhere.

As long as you tell the best story possible, you can trust that people will be able to connect to it.

It's very difficult to be objective about yourself and your own circumstances, but one thing I do know about is that I grew up surrounded by storytellers.

There is nothing that's been in any of my novels that, in my view, hasn't been either illuminating surroundings or defining a character or moving a plot.

Every story I do is about people. It's my survival instinct - one person, one story.

In the ongoing effort to combat Ebola, more needs to be done to rewrite the public-health narrative. It must move from one that has been infused with fear to one that recognizes the hope for survival that supportive care can offer infected people.

To a certain degree, I think both self-narrativizing and selective memory are essential survival skills.

You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters insteresting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.

The way I express ideas is through the plot, Suspense is an important part of expressing an idea.

Suspense is a real tough beast in terms of the filmmaking.