Quotes About Realism

Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical.

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

What is right and what is practicable are two different things.

For two people to satisfy everything each needs for their entire lives is a tall order. Some couples may be equipped to do this. Some are not.

I don't think anyone's interested particularly in watching stuff that's just about two-dimensional characters anymore.

We are not frou-frou creative types. We have done both sides of the business and are constantly asking ourselves, 'How are we going to pay for this?' But the criteria is that it must fit with our world.

An awful lot of actors shy away from the uglier aspects of the human condition. They want to be liked, which is a cop-out. You've got to go for it.

What I try to do often when I'm acting and what I like when I'm seeing good acting is how authentic it is. How true is this to what I know of the world that's been created for me? The ultimate test for me is, like, if I heard a clip of it on the radio, I'd like the audience not to know if I'm acting.

When you're playing someone who really lived, you carry a burden, a burden to be accurate. But it's one that you have to let go of ultimately.

Women want to see more women that look like themselves - they don't want to see something completely unattainable.

I have had unattractive heroes - broken noses, scars, crooked teeth. You want to give them something that is human. My heroines struggle with being too short or fat or old. Some are older than the heroes. You try to cover all spectrums.

What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I'm a realist.

I don't want to play myself up as a hero, because it would make me unbelievable. I'd rather settle for people thinking that I'm a bum, but digging my stories, than liking me and not being able to believe in my stories. That's one reason I've been hard on myself, because I want my stuff to be believable.

I personally feel like, if you're watching a film about war, you should get a sense of what it's really like.

Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper.

You don't go to war with the President you want, you go to war with the President you have

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

It is profitable wisdom to know when we have done enough: Much time and pains are spared in not flattering ourselves against probabilities.

Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

I am convinced that an immense number of people who have children should not have them, and do not particularly want them, except as "symbols" of family life. What they want are ideal children, not real ones; and as soon as the real ones show no intention of conforming to the ideal in the parent's mind, they are treated as burdens, shipped away to school or otherwise neglected.