Quotes About Story

No work of literature is the product of only one or two conscious ideas. A story is mysteriously dense of meaning.

Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work.

I think this is pretty clear, but maybe not to everybody: Despite the fact that the work is personal or taken from life, it's not about me telling my personal story.

That's the holy grail as a TV writer, to work on a story that you care about and to put it out there and for it to find the audience and connect with fans and connect with critics.

It's always a pleasure to see John. I'm fond of telling people that when I was a young actor in NY and had no work ,no money, you know the story because you're heard it before.

The function of the Short Story is to be interesting, to convey vivid impressions, an therefore it must, to a degree, work with the evident and superficial thing

I think what makes a good action film is a story that gets you involved. Just action, by itself, is not going to work.

No matter what strategies you make, if you don't get the right script, everything is going to go down.

I think that 'Straw Dogs' as a story is eminently re-makable. It can be modernized and Americanized without a problem and without giving up any artistic integrity.

The truth is that we're not remaking Sam Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs,' we're making 'Straw Dogs.' We're taking this story, and we're putting our own spin on it. The mere fact that I have James Marsden in it is an indication that it's a very different film than the one that had Dustin Hoffman in it.

Apple, iTunes, and streaming services have made the single a more easy thing to access. What that's done has made the album as a collection of songs almost meaningless. But an album that has a concept or story or reason to be an album, if anything, has more meaning now than it ever has.

A street is a story in asphalt - so it's a paradox that the streets are the one place where the movies play fast and loose with continuity, something to which L.A. streets lend themselves as naturally as does the city's psyche.

Novels are so much unrulier and more stressful to write. A short story can last two pages and then it's over, and that's kind of a relief. I really like balancing the two.

You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make.

Everything starts with what's on the page, what a writer has come up with. And whether it is a big studio film or independent film, is the story being well told? Is it interesting? Is the character interesting? And is there something about the character that may stretch me?

Music does not carry you along. You have to carry it along strictly by your ability to really just focus on that little small kernel of emotion or story.

I think there has to be an empathic strike between the reader and the protagonist. There has to be something said or known that connects the reader to this person you're going to ride through the story with.

I just always loved the storytelling aspect. Even with the production that's happening right now in music, I still think the core of country songs are very stripped down, and they tell a story in the most pure sense.

Inspired by Alex Haley's 'Roots,' at the age of 11 I began a handwritten Middle Passage story called 'Lawdy, Lawdy, Make Us Free.' I was raised by civil rights activists with a very strong sense of racial history and consciousness.

When there is a strong woman character in a story - that always grabs me.

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

I strongly believe that besides having good action, action-oriented films need to have a good baseline for the script.

The impact of the magazine was very strong. As I said, it portrayed dinosaurs as part of the geological history, part of the story of life on earth. It struck that paleontology was the career for me.

But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing.