Stories Quotes

I've written thousands of stories, started hundreds of news cycles.

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by. religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need.

I hate the way market forces try to separate us out in to the appropriate demographic - basically in order to sell us things. We need to find stories that we can enjoy together, not separately.

The way that a handful of corporations in Los Angeles dictate how our stories are told creates a real poverty of imagination and it's a big problem.

I know little stories that happen to people around me, and I can repeat that in a way that has some color.

There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces.

The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula.

One of the things that's pretty unique about nu shu, when you look especially at these old letters and stories that have been saved, is that there are certain lines that are very standard that are used again and again. It's almost like a formula in a sense, so that these certain lines come up again and again.

I've been taking longer to write stories lately.

There's a lot of peer pressure to not do positive stories out of Iraq... I think there's a sense that the administration got a pass during the hot days of war and now that the war is over it's time to even out the deck somewhat.

With indies, all they have is their script and it's very important to them. The characters are better drawn, the stories more precise and the experience greater than with studio films where sometimes they fill in the script as they're shooting.

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

I love meeting new people and telling them about my stories and my projects that I am working on.

I try to do stories that make a difference - stories that affect the way people think, stories that people need to hear - and usually what drives me is to do stories about people who have no voice, people who have no political power, people who are overlooked by society.

Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.

Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.

There wasn't much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.

It's easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories.

Hollywood used to be run by artists and people who loved artists... people who wanted to make movies for all the right reasons. For the love. The Art. To tell stories. Yes to make money as well, but it was about both. Now I feel, it's mostly about bottom line and making money.

Well, acting itself is a form of rebellion, always. Getting up there in front of people, telling stories - you're kind of going against the grain to begin with, wanting to do that, don't you think? Why else would you do it? Except maybe as kind of a way to affirm your very existence.

How many times can you put together 26 different stories without running out?

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.

I'm finding, as I get older, that I'm not much of a believer in redemption. I mean, I believe in redemption in real life - redemption does happen, and it's cool when it does - but I find myself getting leery of my desire for it in stories (especially my own).

I would love to do a period piece - in the 18th or 17th century. To me, it would be such an incredible challenge because of the way people carried themselves. There are so many incredible stories within those centuries - just the language and the way they carried themselves and what they were going through.

Eudora Welty's 'A Curtain of Green' had an enormous effect on me. But my early attempts to graft stories from the Deep South onto North of England provincialism were not successful. All were rejected.

Stories come from other shows at other studios where only 2,000 rounds were actually used and the money for the other 3,000 went right into the studio pockets. Corners were cut and that production suffered. Knock wood, that hasn't happened to us.

I've programmed myself musically to come up with love-feeling tracks that are romantic, sexy, but classy, all in one. And that's the challenge. Once I create that music, then the lyrical content starts to come - you know, the stories and things like that.

I want to write a book of poetry, as well as children's stories.

First you wonder if they're separate stories, but no, they're not, they're contingent stories and they form a pattern. And you begin with some of the island as the place to which the heroine of the book returns.