David Zabel Quotes

In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

I don't really approach stories to make them different from other stuff I've seen, I just try to get into the character, into his or her head. Try to make it as funny, as scary or as wild as I can so that I really like it.

No novel is a clone of any preceding one, though with a background cast of characters and things that has grown to thousands, there are many familiar aspects.

As a writer, I challenge myself not to tell the same story - to tackle different characters with different issues.

If the novelist isn't surprised by where his book ends up, he or she probably hasn't written anything worth remembering.

I always start from scratch with a character - they're never based on anyone else. You get ideas of what people look like, and I'm a great people watcher. You can draw inspiration from people.

No two dramatists think or write alike. Ten thousand playwrights can take the same premise, as they have done since Shakespeare, and not one play will resemble the other except in the premise. Your knowledge, your understanding of human nature, and your imagination will take care of that.

Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure.

The more you put out there, the more you have to resolve. 'Air' is the most literary comic I've written so far, and that poses problems.

Horrors, I believe, should be original - the use of common myths and legends being a weakening influence.

They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel.

Find your own way into your story. Find your own way into your game.

I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before.

A good script can come from anywhere.

It's very rare for me to come across a script for NYMF that is truly its own animal. That's really what appealed to me about 'Valueville.' I still have my notes from when I first read it.

Adapting a book is the most difficult thing because half the time you are wondering what to remove.

I want to tell stories of impact.

A good TV writer needs all the same tricks a good novelist has.

With fiction, I've grown to really love the challenge of lying, the challenge of telling a good tale that isn't truthful, and working with performers is endlessly fascinating. You know, learning what a good performance is, how to get a good performance, how much or how little you need to create emotion or to create character.

I was an actor for a little bit. That's when I started to understand fiction - and that one of the great things about fiction is that you're dependent on the characters as much as they're dependent on you.

We always wanted to do a children's book of some form or another.

I think one of the battles for fiction writers is how much to invent or exaggerate.

I used to say I wasn't interested in writing about characters.

Honestly, the life of a serial character on television, I'd love to write an essay about it.