Quotes About Storytelling

Making sentences is what I do. I mean, the story will come as I write.

TV has become long-form now. A season can be like a 13-hour film, separated into episodes, so you can analyse a character for five years and talk about the things that films used to talk about but don't any more.

I'm not the guy to ask to write a sequel.

There's nothing wrong with doing sequels, they're just easier to sell.

There have been funny sequels, but I don't know if there have been that many that feel like they're - you know - they're just as great a movie to watch, just as fun an experience but different.

Believe me, sequels are just as hard to make as original films.

Usually, people begin with very clear ideas of good movies, they begin with clear ideas about their characters, and then, as they do sequels, they seem to forget the characters more and more, and try to out-spectacle.

I don't want to be someone whose shot takes you out of the dramatic sequence or takes you out of the emotional story that you're trying to tell or says, 'Hey, look at this cool shot I have here.' To me, that's not right.

I love serial drama.

You try, as an actor, to wear a mask; you're serving a story.

When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.

Whenever you're blessed and given a second season, you can really let the characters evolve. That first season, you're setting everything up. It's background, where they're coming from, what they want to do. And then you get to marinate in it that second season.

If you want to shake a hand, if you want a story, I'll be more than happy to sit down with you and talk with you. It's what I love to do.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

I think Shakespeare, at his heart, was just the way all of us are that make movies: He wanted to entertain people.

When it comes to history I am shameless. I will do whatever it takes to get people involved.

For me, 'Shanghai' is beyond language. For me, it's good cinema. The language is incidental.

I want to tell a story and shape it all the way through to the end.

What I do is doing movies and sharing movies.

The biggest part of why I am where I am today is not only because people can relate to me and my story but because I hit the road and actually saw them face to face and shook their hands.

After making a movie, maybe you weren't able to shoot many of your ideas, because a movie is only 1 1/2 or two hours long, but TV gives you space to film a lot of things.

Some of the best writing I've done, whether I'm shooting a story or thinking of a script, I write it in my head as I'm running. Running literally jogs my brain.

In a very real sense, all you do when you're shooting film or television is you shoot a scene, and then you shoot another scene, and then you shoot another scene.

I did a couple of short films when I was in Scotland.