Quotes About Story

The novel 'World War Z' is told from the perspectives of so many people - speaking to the narrator - that there's no way a movie could capture all of them. Still, the idea of turning a zombie pandemic into a war story is fascinating and could have translated easily to film.

I really like using genre to tell a story about characters but also use it as a Trojan horse to tell social or cultural commentary. That's where the best stuff, especially in the zombie genre, comes out of.

It's absurd to think of 'Pride and Prejudice,' this classic, beloved book, beset with a zombie uprising. The goal is to make you suspend your disbelief enough to allow you to get lost in the story and believe what you're reading for a while.

I've never read 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,' although I certainly know what that is. And what I love about that concept is as much as it's a zombie story, it's also 'Pride and Prejudice.'

What I love about 'The Walking Dead' is it's a human story, which is to me what makes the comic book so good, but once you jump from the pages of the book to the screen, the gore and the zombies have to look great.

I had always shown childhood as something difficult, something you want to get the hell out of, but now I wanted to do a story that was the opposite, about that moment in time when you're in that world of discovery, doing what you want to do. That fleeting moment when you're in your zone.

A message I've been telling myself: the cinema is very conservative, and unless you have a story that satisfies you, that is within the unchallenging zone, but you love it, you can't do it as cinema. Otherwise, you better go do it for television, which is more daring now.

War reporters are often seen as a wild bunch of thrill-seekers who wade into danger zones simply for the sake of the adrenalin high the settings inevitably provide. But this one-dimensional explanation leaves out the core of the story, which is that reporters go to these places because they feel the tug of responsibility.

Reporters do decide what is news, but they don't invent it, even if they sometimes become part of the story by risking their lives in a danger zone, as in the case of ABC's Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt.

Filming a story set in a war zone in the '60s was such a treat, as it gave me so much scope to dive into.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

I remember my father telling me the story of the preacher delivering an exhortation to his flock, and as he reached the climax of his exhortation, a man in the front row got up and said, 'O Lord, use me. Use me, O Lord - in an advisory capacity!'

Illustrations have as much to say as the text. The trick is to say the same thing, but in a different way. It's no good being an illustrator who is saying a lot that is on his or her mind, if it has nothing to do with the text. . . the artist must override the story, but he must also override his own ego for the sake of the story.

One anecdote of a man is worth a volume of biography.

A good book has no ending.

Patience is a most necessary quality for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.

Biography is higher gossip.

'Chernobyl' is a human story. It's not a disaster movie. It's not about explosions. It's about people and truths and lies.

I was always at heart a novelist and wanted to tell a bigger story, so I wanted to create people who told other kinds of truths than literal truths.

'Fall on Your Knees' is really a story about secrets and family, and the idea that there are some stories or truths that need to be expressed.

There is an old story that says that Julia Child dropped a chicken on the floor when she was filming 'The French Chef.' And then - that, in fact, is not true. She just, you know, dropped some potatoes she was trying to flip in a pan.

When somebody gives their testimony or tells their story, the next person can be motivated or inspired by it. That's all I'm trying to do.

I use a lot of narration; I have a very prosaic style. I like to get you invested in the character first and do a lot of work in the first pages of each issue to try to re-establish things and keep the symbolism of a story very tucked beneath the surface.

I think I started writing about identity, and I used to believe that identity is the story. But now I'm not so much subscribed to that. I mean, with 'Mr. Fox,' it has a feminist agenda as well. And so, as I sort of been away from writing about identity, I still feel that kind of tug of roots and, you know, cultural background.