Natural Conversation Quotes

Dialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. When you're writing lines you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our terms. We don't say 'Sweetheart, would you pass me the sugar bowl, which we picked up for a song at that antique stall in Munich.'

I don't rehearse on either of my shows, 'Family Feud' or my talk show. I never rehearse with the guests. I don't want to have any preconceived thoughts, notions, because that kills my creativity as a host and as a stand up.

I wanted when we began this to have a conversation, the kind that you're able to have, and the only way I knew how to do it was not to have a pre-interview.

I like when you can have a conversation with people and it's not just stock questions.

I've done network shows. A director will call me and say, 'Do you want to do this with me?' and I'll say, 'Sure,' but I couldn't do it forever because there's no real expression. That's not how people talk.

Why focus on what somebody might think? Nobody talks [on TV] like people really talk most of the time.

After I get comfortable, I kind of forget that we're even doing an interview and I say whatever comes to the mind.

A spontaneous interview feels differently than anything else you see on television.

I think one of the highest compliments you can give a person is that when you are talking to him, you are not thinking about the fact that you are talking to him. That is, your thoughts and words all exist on a single, engaged level. You are being yourself because you aren't bothering to think about who you should be. It is like when you talk in a dream.

As soon as you are trying to be funny or dramatic, that's when things start feeling fake and boring.

This conversation with the audience has been going on since, what, '72, '73... Sometimes it's like a conversation after dinner with friends. You're in a restaurant, and you got there at 8 o'clock. Suddenly, you realize it's midnight. Where did the time go? You're enjoying the conversation. It's sort of a natural, organic conversation.

Just go with your gut and communicate.

I just don't like filming scenes where it's like, that's not how people talk. People aren't saying a joke every five seconds.

Some celebrities, it's interesting, because they're fantastic playing a character when somebody is writing the lines for them, and they're amazing actors, but they're not as comfortable on television in front of a live audience and just having a conversation and being themselves.

My main problem is that over and over again, I try to get all my characters to say stuff that I think is so witty or erudite you know, so that everybody will go.

I'm a great believer in conversational rhythm. I think in terms of rhythmic dialogue. It's so easy, you can talk naturally. It's like peas rolling off a knife. Take the great screen actors and actresses, Bette Davis, Eddie Robinson, Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy. They all talk in rhythm. And rhythm and movement are the life of the screen.

There's a sense of spontaneity, and no emphasis on jokes in this show. People generally talk the way they talk in life if you were in this particular situation.

In real life, when you speak with each other you overlap each other, so you can't fake that. Like especially when you have no cut. In a regular film when you want people to overlap you cut it that way. It's mixing and editing.

We're looking for a certain kind of realism or naturalism, and we go about it in different ways, but I think we're all striving for the same end result, which is to capture the patterns of conversations and how people interact in a very realistic way.

There's lots of good movies where you feel that the dialogue could be improvised, but very little was. The "Big Lebowski" was like that where people say "oh, you know, that sounds so..." and we'd always go back and get every man, every ellipses in there the way these guys write it. Because not only is it saying what Michael wants the character to say but the way they all speak kind of creates this tone because it's not exactly real.

From the very beginning, I always tried to make dialogue flow comfortably; I always did that to make it seem more authentic.

I find that dialogue is bad in most scripts. I just think there are very few writers that can capture the natural way people talk.

When you people have a set up joke and the joke is set up straight and the words are just well written, I always say "C'mon, humans don't speak that way."