Quotes About Storytelling

As an author, I've never forgotten how to daydream.

I want to make more films in the heartland, the forgotten America.

We seem, particularly over here in the West and in America in particular, to have forgotten that we are, in large measures, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.

There are many ways to go about a story. And if you give yourself some formal constraints, it just makes the job so much - maybe 'easier' isn't the right word, but because you know your boundaries, you can just play within those boundaries much more, so it's much more fun to do.

The anthology format is completely normal to me. That's just how TV works in my experience.

American shows can go on for 20 years. I respond more to the British format. Three seasons is a long run for them to tell a story.

If you want to convey a message, you must do so in an enjoyable format.

We used Chaplin's formula in all my pictures. Make 'em laugh for five and a half reels, and then make 'em cry in the last half reel. But give 'em a chance to dry their eyes before the lights come up.

I got out of school in 2000, and I always wanted to be on 'This American Life,' since I first started telling stories. And that, I mean, that show is a little bit of a fortress. It's really hard to get stuff on that show.

I have actually been very fortunate to be able to make films on my own credit card without having huge funders behind me dictating how the story should be told.

I don't think we set out to make it the most intense 'Fosters' finale ever, but I kind of think that's what we ended up with.

I never like to put myself in the stories; in 'Lost in the City,' there are fourteen stories, and there's only one, 'The First Day,' about a little girl going to school, that has anything to do with me.

When Fox asked me if I'd consider taking on The X-Men universe for television, my first thought was, 'What would you do with those stories or that genre that hasn't been done?'

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

Amelia shows that it's not what happens in life that counts, but rather how you frame it, how you talk about it.

My position was that the film begins with the first frame and that the film should be doing a job at that point.

I think in the 'Deadpool' franchise, the writers are really good at distilling the good stuff and applying that to the material in this universe.

I'm telling the story, and if I can't tell the story, I'm not going to sing it. And if I don't agree with the story, and if I got to sing something that portrays me as something I'm not, then I'm not going to sing it either. I didn't even want to sing Aretha Franklin's 'Chain of Fools.'

I find the constraints of drama actually freeing: It brings everything down to character and action.

I hope to bring fresh ideas to the big screen.

The thing that I'm trying to accomplish is to tell the stories and my feelings in ways that are relatable. But at the same time, I'm so tired of hearing the same old crap. Bring some freshness if you can.

My parents would watch movies like 'Big' and 'Freaky Friday,' and I wanted to see that kind of story told from an African-American angle. So I had the idea for 'Little,' and then I told my parents, and we all fleshed it out together.

Something that I learned from 'Friday Night Lights,' sometimes if you have four or five scenes in an episode, it's not having less than having 10. It's what you do with those scenes.

You're allowed to bore your friends and family, but to bore your audience is unforgivable.