Of course, everyone knows my story of being born in Russia and moving to the United States at 7. For a few years people would say, 'Well, she's living in the United States, but she's Russian.'
I'm working on something that's not yet novel-shaped but is something of a film-noir-flavored 'Alice in Wonderland.' It will also very likely be a single volume story and not the start of a series.
What has always surprised me when I walk into a bookstore is the number of books that you can find that are written with certainty. The authors tell some story as though it's true, but they don't have any evidence that it is true!
I think good art should always be entertaining, or at least give pleasure of some sort. And my chief goal as a writer has always been to tell a good story and give my readers a good time.
'Forever Evil' is, ultimately, a Lex Luthor story. And everything in there is reflecting who Lex is and what he's going through. And we continue to learn more and more things about him that we might not know, and he's going to continue to experience things and do things that are surprising, I think, to even him - especially us.
In a sense, any story that anyone writes is going to be autobiographical - whether it deals directly with the author's experience or not - because it captures what we're obsessed with while working on that particular piece.
You know there's some great folks, great story telling at 'Dateline,' and I'm glad to be a part of it.
Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.
How any person decides to emphasize strengths and mitigate weaknesses is something people have to figure out for themselves. I'm wary of the self-help literature that suggests there are certain rules. I'm very happy for people to look at my story and say it's possible to achieve many things.
The highest admiration I have for my colleagues is not for someone in a studio in New York but for somebody on the ground in places that they've gone to fight to tell the story.
All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job.
I remember telling my second-graders the basic 'Metamorphosis' story, saying, like, 'What about - what if a guy woke up one morning and he was a bug? Wouldn't that be weird?' And they loved that. And I think that was the trigger that made me think, like, 'Oh man, here's my audience. They're just a lot shorter than I ever thought they might be.'
If anybody reads a story in a magazine or book, different pictures compete in their minds.
Well, I had nightmares when I was doing the Klan story all the time. I had a recurring nightmare of basically being exposed as a Jew inside the Klan compound.
Verbs allow you to communicate a story in a much more converged or involuntary way for a reader. The verbs allow you to come in under the radar, below people's defenses.
I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland.
So be it. God created profoundly fallible creatures on this earth, and human history is mostly the story of error and accident.
I mean I have a project that I have been wanting to make for quite a while now; and basically, it's a story of my parents growing up in the Lower East Side.
So if you want to have a great video game-based movie you have to keep the mood of the game, use the normal character setup - but you have to flesh out the story and provide more background for the characters.
I don't think teams play this game to hurt other guys. I don't think that's the story. We don't play this game to hurt one another.
I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.
The successful landing on the moon, very probably, is the best story.
I have never sold my story, done 'Hello!' magazine, any of that stuff. I'm not guilty of exploiting my private life for cash and then saying, 'Oh, I don't want to talk about my private life.' I've never crossed that line.
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.
The popular story is that America was built by immigrants and that, therefore, everything about immigration is good and leads to a more successful society. This narrative is so devoid of historical context that it should embarrass anyone beyond a second-grade education.
The only difference is that religion is much better organised and has been around much longer, but it's the same story with different characters and different costumes.
Yes, I believe stories are very important to all performances. The life story of the performer shapes their work, and the life stories of the audience alter how they receive the work, what they read into the performer.
My preference is for people who can do sketch comedy or situational comedy, where it's not a joke, but it's telling a story.
I really like knowing secrets, and once I do know that secret, I can keep it. But if I'm on the outside and I don't know the secret, that's a different story. I will try with all my power to get the secret out of the person who knows.
I mean, any movie or story that makes you accept and be grateful for something about your life is doing something right.
As a print journalist, you can be frustrated by people who don't call you back, parts of the story you can't get. TV gets you access to everyone because people call you back. It also allows you to satisfy your curiosity. I am a very curious person.
Be it a video game, comic book, or cheque book, the question always is, 'What story do you have to tell?'
The rich and famous expect to get a lot for their story, whether they are writing it themselves or not. It's not that they need the money, of course; it's a question of ego, like catching the biggest fish.
'Jane Eyre' was one of those films that I was familiar with as a kid, and I always enjoyed the story.
I suppose that I was a kind of consultant for taste. Is it good taste? Or bad taste? I had an attention to detail, to what would tell best the story. Because many people get excited about the work and drift off from the story.
I don't think there is another person in America that wants to tell this story as much as I do.
