Charles Dance Quotes

There are definitely reasons to do certain things, but I like to stick to good director, good actor, good script.

I get a script and it's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.

Good scripts are hard to find.

A good script and perfect casting, that's 90 percent of the work.

You can dress it up, but it comes down to the fact that a movie is only as good as its script.

It's never easy to adapt a book, especially as the author, because it's as if you're chopping off appendages. It really feels painful to decide what has to go.

'An Education' was a complicated piece of work because it came from a tiny essay, so it took me a while to find the story I wanted to tell and the characters I wanted to tell it about. That really only emerged after four or five drafts.

It makes a world of difference when you start with an amazing script.

The technology is really where all of the changes have taken place, but the fundamentals of a good story being the basis of every good picture, and really the only basis still remains the rule, more so today, I think, because we've unfortunately weaned an audience from birth to kind of mindless movies.

I am not very good at sticking to outlines, and I double back all the time to revisit scenes and change things.

If you're writing a screenplay, you need to be prepared to let go: there's a good chance the words you write aren't going to be the ones that end up on screen.

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

It is so much hard work writing your first novel. You're not even sure that it is possible to do.

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

I'm a sort of boy next door. If that boy has a good scriptwriter.

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.

The real challenge in doing a TV show is in what I would call the maintenance energy. You take that creative energy and you use it every week, of course. But you then need to maintain the quality of the stories, and it's harder to do.

A good project but a poor director will always make a mediocre film, but an average script and good director can make a good film, as he will put in everything to make the film look good.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

I'm still very much a believer in the spontaneity of certain kinds of writing. But then you have to eventually, when you're writing a long play, make adjustments along the way - all kinds of adjustments.

I'm very focused on 'Dexter' right now. I want to make it as good of a show as we can.

Well, there's no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie.

There are a lot of good stories out there, but I haven't found too many great scripts.

I'd love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked.