Quotes About Storytelling

At Harvard, direct cinema was the core of the film department, and most of the students were trying to make socially conscious works, but I was trying to combine fiction and non-fiction to show how our seemingly factual world is constituted through fantasy and stories.

Everyone who sits on a sofa watching 'Match of the Day' is a top soccer expert, as you know. So if you start to worry about such people reading your story and saying, 'That'd never happen' you're going to freeze up. You're writing fiction, and your characters can do whatever you need them to do.

Authors can only soft sell the environment. Create a wonderful story around the environment involving the characters that leaves a lasting impression on the reader's mind.

I tried softball and soccer. I just didn't take as much of a liking to it as I did sitting in a movie theater and watching people recreate a story, and doing it myself, as well.

I love games, and I feel they've been sold short shrift in films so far.

Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You're absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can't do for you.

For me personally, I'm constantly trying to really re-negotiate how I'm going to make a living because I can't make a living solely off editorial. And I'm also still trying to tell long feature stories that are harder and harder to get assigned, you know.

I want to tell human stories not solely based on race. There are so many great actresses and actors that are out there, and I just want to see them do good work.

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.

One of my favourite things about country music is that, at least until recently, you could always count on a solid story, a punchline and a pun. I think it has that in common with hip hop, where they're not afraid of wordplay and I really appreciate that.

Picking just one game above all is nearly impossible for me, but if I had to, it would be 'Metal Gear Solid.' I remember being completely blown away with the story, the mechanics and the overall presentation on my first playthrough.

I always respected country music for its narrative and how it's so solid, you can get the picture in your mind.

Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.

I'd rather have a small part in a big film or good story than do a solo film just for the sake of it.

I feel I have been playing all primary characters. And if your character forms a connect with the audience, it doesn't matter if you are playing only the main solo lead or a second lead.

I used to feel that if I say something's wrong, I have to say how it could be made right. But what I learned from Kurt Vonnegut was that I could write stories that say I may not have a solution, but this is wrong - that's good enough.

Films are never meant as solutions; they just provide entertainment value.

I could put a sudoku at the end of every chapter and you'd have to solve it to progress through the story, but that doesn't address what would make people want to interact.

For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance.

Some people just don't seem to understand the concept of fiction. It is fiction; it ain't true, folks.

The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't.

I mean it allowed me to do that which was fantastic because we really get to see the character mature and deal with some things that are, that I think as an audience member, really pull us in.

I sometimes think I should write a book. I've seen some things, you know, but it's all there in the songs.

You know, it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things, it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles, telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope, someday, we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.