Story Quotes

If you're gonna tell your life story, you gotta be honest, or don't do it.

But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.

I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.

You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don't go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

I always wanted to create this community that would come and tell their own story, shoot it - and watch them. The idea is to not have one entity who creates the work, the project, and another entity who consumes it; the idea is people create their own work, like somebody cultivating his garden.

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

My favorite Oscar story was a year my brother had been nominated, my whole family went.

You want the story to end when it's supposed to and not be squeezed for somebody's financial gain.

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Nicole will come up in conversations where it's in a part of the conversation. Or we may be somewhere and I would tell some story about their mother and I. You know, we always honor her birthday.

I want to work with great directors and try not to put too much pressure on myself and just read things for the story and recognize when I'm drawn to something for the right reasons and try to maintain some sanity.

I'm drawn to a good story, really, as I hope most people are. For me, it's the story that's going to stay with you eventually, not necessarily the genre. I go to watch a film because of the story, not because it was a Western or a comedy.

I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.

I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.

It's the story of an American who wants to become a dictator and goes to Europe with a sidekick to interview various Fascists to find out how the Nazis and Mussolini got into power.

With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

I went to film school to make films just because you're in control of the story.

I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.

TV is bigger than any story it reports. It's the greatest teaching tool since the printing press.

Theater is just so much more satisfying than film or television just because you deliver the whole thing from start to finish in one evening, and you can tell if people have enjoyed it or not. That's great to do every night to go in front of a full room of people and tell the story. There's nothing like that really.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

If I like the story and it's well written, and it's a character I want to play and they'll pay me, then I decide to do it.

If someone knows me and likes me or my work, they're more likely to allow me to tell their story. But it also cuts the other way.

Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.

I'm trying to tell a story and do it truthfully.

I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.

A single prop that does not look real to an audience can louse you up. The same is true of the smallest flaw in setting up the motivation in a story line.

A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.