Captivating Narratives Quotes

I prefer when movies target my heart instead of my mind.

People who don't normally read make an exception for my books, possibly because they're short.

Stephen [King], who wrote the script himself, was on the set [of The Stand], and I was just so fortunate to get to know him. What a wonderful man. He may go down in history as the greatest American writer, pound for pound.

It's hard to build community around mediocre and mundane writing.

I still think that of all the people doing top fiction today, John D. MacDonald is the best.He was my model as a kid. If there are people out there that want to write, all you need to do is read 20 of his stories to get an idea what it takes to make a story kick over.

I am all for titillating trivialities. I am all for the epic touch. I could almost say that everything in Time, should be either titillating or epic or starkly, supercurtly factual.

The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years. Roald Dahl

I really admire Nick Hornby - for example, the way that he can make ordinary stuff so beautiful!

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.

I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good.

I've always been drawn to the best writing that I can find. I don't care if it's in movies or theater or whatever - if you want to be in front of an audience, you have to do writing you believe in.

The most attractive characteristic in a person is the story they are telling the world. We stop and stare at stories.

If a film is good, and I'm sort of able to sit there and absorb myself within that world. And get lost. That is a pretty powerful tool. And there's not many paintings out there, that make me want to stare at it for hours at a time, and wonder where I am!

It's often said that everybody has a story to tell, and I suppose that's true, but the problem is that most of them aren't worth telling.

It was very hard not to get utterly and wholeheartedly drawn into the stories on 'The Gift.'

If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.

I never want to overstay my welcome for any character. I would rather people are excited by the ideas a character generates in them rather than feeling bored and wishing he would just go away.

Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No. So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

I've always had a desire to write something and capture people's imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.

The best stories infuse wonder.

My writing has to excite people and depict or include their experiences. That's part of my process - to go out and interact with people. It's very much like an archival process. I understand that the Brothers Grimm would go out and get people talking so they could document folk tales that weren't being documented any other way. I try to offer a little bit of myself - some experience from my life that evokes stories in other people.

A good story isn't the one that shuts everyone down and sort of leaves them in silent awe. A good story is one that, even before you finish the anecdote, you can see their eyes shining because it has so resonated with something from their own lives that everyone in the group has a version of the same story and they cannot wait to tell it, and that they're going to compete to make their version even more extreme than your version. So your version is just a seed.

I'm in the storytelling business, and so you're always drawn to the unusual. And early on, I discovered that's the easiest way to tell stories... If you come up through a newspaper as I did, your whole goal is to get a story on the front page, and you only get something on the front page if it's unusual.

I look for those moments that are 'gee whiz' moments. There's some 'gee whiz' stories in our show, and they can't be written like A-1 in the Times. They have to be written more like Page 6 in the Post.

Whatever your style or subject matter, in the end, film-making is about searching for authenticity - that is what the audience will divine.