I value humor, kindness, and the ability to tell a good story far more than money, status, or the kind of car someone drives.
I'm not sure if a writer should talk about themes. Themes arrive out of the deeper structure and concerns, but to me, the main thing is getting it down right, writing about specific characters in specific predicaments, and finding a way to be true to the story itself, not only in the first burst of draft but in the revision, too.
When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.
To me, it doesn't really matter how big the part is as long as the part is important to the story.
What makes for a good argument, at bottom, is being more prepared than anyone else in that courtroom, and being willing to fight to tell your client's story - the story of why the right view of the law and my client's interests are one and the same.
I always say that in any roomful of people, I could hive a novel out of any one person's family or life story.
'The Clone Wars' is certainly set in the darkest possible time throughout the whole 'Star Wars' story.
If having a story that's compelling - you want to know what will happen - is traditional, then ultimately I am a traditionalist. That is what readers care about. It's what I care about as a reader. Now if I can have that along with a strong girding of ideas and some kind of exciting technical forays - then that is just the jackpot.
My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly.
Photography must be integrated with the story.
If you think of the typical Herbalife distributor and their level of sophistication, to this day I still don't understand the marketing plan - true story.
Every time I get a role, or the opportunity to explore a role, I look at it, and I think, 'What is the story we're trying to tell here?'
The fun of the Super Bowl is the week leading into it; once it's actually played, the story dies down very, very quickly.
In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.
It's a great story. It's available for anyone else who wants to try it. We're not brilliant. We're not unbelievable. We're just two people who hit a nerve. I think it can be done again and again and again. More people should try it.
I always kind of think I don't have a style, just whatever seems to be appropriate for the story.
The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.
On Wall Street, every story becomes known so quickly. They are all so connected that everything disseminates there faster than anywhere.
Surely the whole point of writing your own life story is to be as honest as you possibly can, revealing everything about yourself that is most private and probably most interesting for that very reason.
I think that most Americans feel that the Indians lost because of fair fights and superior odds and superior weaponry. That's because that's the only side of the story that's been told.
I try to do the story the way I feel the story should be done, and how that folds into whatever larger sorts of categories or questions is really none of my business.
India... what a big part you play in this story for IBM and for the world.
Everybody is an expert on one thing - that's what I learned in my high school journalism class - and that's, of course, his own life. And everybody deserves to live and have his story told. And if it doesn't seem like an interesting story, then that's the failure of the listener, or the journalist who retells it badly.
Where film is infinitely superior to any other medium is emotion and story and character.
We're talking about, essentially, the Roman historians, who wrote Cleopatra into the story mostly so that they could talk about the rise of Rome. And that is one of the problems, of course, in recounting her life. She's only ever apparent to us when there is a Roman in the room, or when her story intersects with the rise of Rome.
When I was a kid, the book that I liked the most was 'Aesop's Fables.' There was a version of it that my father read stories to us kids out of. I liked the idea of the short story format.
People often talk about parachute journalism, but one of the skills that you get when you are a correspondent is the ability to look at facts fast and work out what the story is.
What I had to do was keep the story within certain limits of what was, of course, plausible.
A dinosaur out of context is like a character without a story. Worse than that, the character suffers from amnesia.
My mother is a special story. She went through so much to bring us up, four men at home, especially when our country was going through really difficult times.
The work that I do with all of my characters is have some sense of where they come from. I kind of create my own story for myself. What's going on with my parents? Are they alive? Or family - do I have children? Do you see those things or not?
I don't know if you've ever tried writing a Doctor Who story, but it's a lot more difficult than it initially appears, especially if you've got more than one assistant.
I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.
I take a whole life story and compress it into three minutes.
I was also the romantic lead in The Boston Strangler - I was the only one that lived to tell the story - so I called myself the romantic lead.
Originally the film opened with Ryan in the doctor's office, being told his wife is dying. Then we see him walking the streets, and the story is told in flashback.
