We have been telling and hearing and reading war stories for millennia. Their endurance may lie in their impossibility; they can never be complete, for the tensions and the contradictions within them will never be eliminated or resolved. That challenge is essential to their power and their attraction. War stories matter.
I was hugely formed by stories I was told as a child whether that was in a book, the cinema, theatre or television and probably television more than any medium is what influenced me as a child and formed my response to literature, story-telling and, therefore, the world around me.
It's easier to come up with new stories than it is to finish the ones you already have. I think every author would feel that way.
I live for my work, apart from my family who come first. And I live to tell stories and pretend to be other people, it's something I've been doing since I was 3 years old. Maybe it's because I'm intrinsically bored with myself, and I find other people more interesting.
Stories are great, but at the end of the day, you remember that moment and that moment and that moment. 'The Avengers' had all of this great, giant action, but for all of the clever dialogue, it's the moments.
I wanted to be a scientist. My undergraduate degree is in biology, and I really did think I might go off and be some kind of a lady Darwin someplace. It turned out that I'm really awful at science and that I have no gift for actually doing science myself. But I'm very interested in others who practice science and in the stories of science.
The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal.
It's sort of what the Johnny and Devi stories are about, the idea of always being a slave to something.
Corner one of the hundreds of doctors who specialize in autism recovery, and they'll tell you stories of dozens of kids in their practice who no longer have autism. Ask them to speak to the press and they'll run for the door. They know better.
My family fled Iran in October 1978 as a result of the coming revolution when I was two years old. In the early days, my entire family lived together in a very crowded house, where I shared a room with my sister, cousin, and grandmother, and we would all listen to my grandmother tell stories before bedtime.
I was hired to do as many Boy Commando, Newsboy Legion, and Sandman stories as I could.
Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.
In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked.
All of these stories bounced around in my mind for a long time.
Working on 'Drive', a lot of fun. This is Tim Minear whom I've worked with before on 'Firefly' of course. He called me up and said, 'I've got a part for you that you will love,' and I love Tim's writing. I love his stories. I love his characters, his dialogue. He has a knack for reveals and he has a knack for moments.
My favorite part of the whole filmmaking process is working with a fantastic cinematographer, a fantastic actor or actors, and then just creating emotions and stories. I get so excited by that. That's the part I'm utterly addicted to.
The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old.
My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has grown up a middle-class child - one who sometimes asks me for stories of my childhood but knows nothing of what it means to grow up poor and afraid. I have worked to make sure of that.
I'm known for impressions and family stories.
Cheerfully fessing up to our failures turns crazy mind off, humility and compassion on. I learned this in a karate dojo that had a strange tradition. Everyone there loved recounting failure stories, and after an evening of smacking one another, we'd sit and have a beer while the students swapped tales of martial arts disaster.
Today's ghost stories tend to be much more physically or psychologically violent. The Victorians were much more leisurely about what might or could happen, building suspense layer by layer rather than punching you in the face.
Hoping they'd been inspired by the examples of Anne Frank and other teens who had turned negative experiences into something positive by writing about them, I handed out notebooks for my students to journal about their lives. There was some initial resistance. But then the stories poured out of them, full of anger and sadness.
I very much want to be in the business of creating content, of doing stories all over the world rather than figuring out what the business model is for 'Newsweek' on the iPad, although that's very important work as well.
Israel and our vicinity is an area that traditionally has little industry. The area is known for history, it's known for religious stories, it's known a bit for agriculture, but... neither was the Jewish population thinking about export industry, nor the Arab or Palestinian population.
When people tell really good stories in songs, I really like it.
People need stories; they want stories. They always will.
False stories used to affect me initially. But now, I've come to understand that if false stories are created, they are also forgotten in the long run.
First of all, we were never not speaking. It's gotten so blown out of proportion. It was a very straightforward difference of opinion. I think because we were so private and refused to talk about it, these stories just got out of control.
Pam has always been my glamorous big sister - 13 years older than I. She played on the women's circuit for nine years and came home to tell me stories of France, Japan.
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.
I think that one of the things that drives me in telling stories, and art in general, is finding the beautiful in a big mass of ugly.
People love stories. They need stories.
When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
I feel very privileged to have reached so many kids because a life without stories, without the power of books, would be a very grey world, it's good to add colour.
You see the images that the public is demanding. Why more reality-based TV? You'd think that after the first Survivor it would have gone away, but it hasn't. The public demands it because they get all caught up in the personal stories, and want to see more and more.
I heard stories from my mother's mother who was an American Indian. She was spiritual, although she did not go to church, but she had the hum. She used to tell me stories of the rivers.
