Quotes About Storytelling

Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket... the least understood and the least noticed.

I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.

I didn't really understand what you did when you went in front of the camera. And then suddenly I just understood it. When you're in a play, you carry the story, but you don't have to do that in film.

There is a biblical injunction to tell your children, but the sages who created the Seder several thousand years ago understood that it had to be more than just speaking: that in order for something to connect so emotionally in human beings, it had to be relived.

I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

Above all, a well-imagined story is organized around extraordinary human behaviors and unexpected and startling events, which help illuminate the commonplace and the ordinary.

The challenge in any kind of storytelling, as far as I know, it is, you're looking for the moment that is completely unexpected, but at the same time, you think to yourself, 'Of course, that's the only way it could have gone.' It has to feel like it's the truth of it.

I never look at twists as a way to trick the audience. Obviously, I think a good story has surprises and unexpected turns, and you always want to do that with an audience. But it has nothing to do with conning them or making them believe so strongly in one thing and then kind of going the other way.

In the writers' room, the challenge is always to tell interesting stories in unexpected ways, so we try to never limit ourselves in how we accomplish that.

With 'Always Be My Maybe,' this has to be funny; this has to be entertaining. And then, when we stop for these moments with the characters that are emotional, you kind of feel it more because it's a little bit unexpected.

I learned there's an amazing unexplored territory in terms of narrative. Before, I thought the unexplored territory was the form, the way you shoot a movie. Now, I'm learning about the beautiful marriage between form and narrative.

I have seen 'Sanju,' and it is a well-made commercial film. However, it was left unexplored. I would have directed it with a different approach.

It's true that my stories seem to deal with the end of the world. I've often been called the high priest of gothic miserablism, which is slightly unfair.

Nobody could pile on the applesauce like Mickey. He was the best liar in the world - well, Frank Sinatra can tell a good story, too, but I don't believe he was ever unfaithful to me.

Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don't have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.

I always write three or four projects at the same time. They're stories that I want to tell, and usually I dump them unfinished for the next one in order not to get too cornered and depressed about it.

With the Red Sox, you have more of a literary interest in it. You know they're going to lose; you're just interested in how the plot is going to unfold.

As much as I'm not a journalist, I use journalism. And when you photograph a relationship, it's quite wonderful to let something unfold in front of you.

Everything's always about page-turning, right? What's next? So, if you create questions for audiences, then they'll want to know the answer. Or they begin to formulate possible outcomes. That's the game we play when we're hearing a story unfold. That's part of what sucks us into a movie.

Even if I never sold another book, I'd keep writing, because the stories are here, in my head. Stories that just need to be told. I love watching a plot unfold, and feeling the surprise when the unexpected happens.

I love television because it's the most alive, because you don't know how it's going to end. It's a living thing. Sometimes the writers are watching you to see how things will unfold. Sometimes the writers have written it, and you come to it, and they have to change their way of going because of what you've done.

The woeful tales of 'Super Mario Bros.' and 'Street Fighter' have taught studios that merely slapping a name to a movie is not enough to bring in the fans of the franchise. Also, the way games now unfold their stories more parallels that of a movie, with characters and plot points actually meaning as much as a high score.

I don't know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people.

I love to read, and TV seemed more like a good book, with these incredible series unfolding like chapters in a novel.