Fundamentally, one of the things I tend to migrate toward when I’m working is a story about people whose stories aren’t told in theater. – Thomas Kail
‘Homeland’ is necessarily open-ended since the idea behind television is to spend as much time as possible resolving as little as possible, with a story’s usual need for resolution replaced by an unrelenting urgency that always defers answers and constantly postpones closure. – Steve Erickson
Videos are more like photography. It’s not as much about trying to tell a story as it is creating images. – Tatyana Ali
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. – Tim O’Brien
Tom Kizzia hasn’t just observed and written about Alaska for three-plus decades, he’s lived it. ‘Pilgrim’s Wilderness’ is a story that needed to be told by the only man who could tell it. – Tom Bodett
Tony Blair is one of the most significant world leaders of the modern era. He has a remarkable story to tell. His tenure as prime minister was marked by close relationships with Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, and he enjoys a profile in this country that is rare among foreign leaders. – Sonny Mehta
I like documentaries because there’s nothing to nitpick or criticize about scenes if they aren’t just right. It’s about honesty and real-life circumstances coming out. Granted it can be swayed by how people tell that story, but overall, I like it because it is true. – Steven Yeun
Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did. – Steven Spielberg
I go out and look for a good story to tell and if I like it enough and I decide to direct it, I become dangerously involved in becoming a part of that story. – Steven Spielberg
My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That’s no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying. – Zadie Smith
It’s too bad for us ‘literary’ enthusiasts, but it’s the truth nevertheless – pictures tell any story more effectively than words. – William Moulton Marston
I started as a playwright. Any sort of scriptwriting you do helps you hone your story. You have the same demands of creating a plot, developing relatable characters and keeping your audience invested in your story. My books are basically structured like three-act plays. – Suzanne Collins
No one wants to read a story where I saw a cute puppy on the street and I petted it. I mean, that’s not funny. I only write about the funny stuff. – Tucker Max
There are many reasons I love novels with multiple narratives. In novels where the events are filtered through the consciousness of a single ‘reliable’ narrator, I often wonder, is this the whole story? What could be missing here? – Susan Barker
There’s a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don’t write a boring story about a boring place. – Tim Cahill
When I first got the call from my manager asking if I’d ever heard of Jesse Owens, I recognized the name, looked him up, and was blown away by his story. – Stephan James
I always think if it’s a good story, the audience can’t wait to run out of the theater and go tweet somebody with the gist of a story, in a nutshell, almost, because it was that interesting. – Steven Spielberg
I went to a large consolidated school in Appalachia. And I wrote the story when I was in the second grade and I took it up to the third floor to the school newspaper office that was written and edited by juniors and seniors. – Tom Robbins
This basic thing I always do: ‘What happened between the character’s birth, and page one of the script?’ Anything that’s not in the story, I’ll fill in the blanks. – Viggo Mortensen
Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses. – Simone Weil
The mastery of the turn is the story of how aviation became practical as a means of transportation. It is the story of how the world became small. – William Langewiesche
I disliked singing in English and neither liked the story nor the character of Cressida. – Walter Legge
I suppose ‘This Little Life’ and ‘Brick Lane’ both have things in common in that they have a female protagonist very much at the centre of the story, and they’re subjectively told. – Sarah Gavron
