Story Quotes

I'd have to say the whole experience in making The Neverending Story. I had an incredible time.

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.

Exploitation is a harsh word, I know that, but on a certain level, to me that is the central Hollywood story.

Sometimes I can't get out of the character because the story is very intense.

My dad knows how to tell a story. He'd make me laugh by doing all the different voices.

A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.

When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I'm familiar with. I don't write stories about the nineteenth century.

I can't honestly account for the very personal response that I have to one story and not another, a sense of an orbit, the orbit of a world that draws me as my own life recedes.

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.

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.

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.

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.

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.