The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.

The way one approaches a wilderness story is to fashion a quest - find something that you are truly interested in finding or discovering.

90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody's interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

The pressures to get the story first, if wrong, are greater sometimes than the pressures to get the story right, if late.

A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

When I read Andrew Motion's biography, I wept. It's something about the purity of the story and how fresh it was because of the love letters Keats wrote.

A message I've been telling myself: the cinema is very conservative, and unless you have a story that satisfies you, that is within the unchallenging zone, but you love it, you can't do it as cinema. Otherwise, you better go do it for television, which is more daring now.

I'm just basically telling a story of my life.

The grand scale and immersive nature of The IMAX Experience gives 'Spiderwick' a brand new level of excitement. In IMAX theatres, fans will be drawn into the movie even further and feel as if they are actually part of the story.

'Save the Date' feels like a quiet story about two sisters and the men in their lives, kind of reminiscent of the quieter rom-coms of the 1990s; it's very character-driven and not as wedding-focused.

You know, I think Marco Rubio would be a spectacular candidate for vice president. I think he would energize the country. I think he has a great story. He's bright. He's articulate.

Although this is a fictitious story the history is real. You don't want to re-write history but you certainly want to portray events and characters as realistically as you can.

You can be intuitive when you've got a more expansive role. You can get into the poetry of telling the story rather than just pushing buttons.

I love theaters. I love the event of going there and seeing a movie with a lot of people. I like the community coming around the story.

The story of the Internet is this incredibly strong, exciting change.

Any story is better with a little love in it, right?

There are so many projects that you go into hoping the story works, and here comes a new third act and that kind of thing.

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.

I think a story should take as long to tell as it is appropriate to that particular story.

If he is a ghost, then it's very disappointing for me, because he is banished in the story, and that could mean that he won't be coming back, and that would be terrible, wouldn't it?

History's like a story in a way: it depends on who's telling it.

A boy's story is the best that is ever told.

Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

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 wish I had a funny story.

Every story has its demands.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I'd like to be in? Is this something I'd like to see? And if I'd like to see it, would I like to tell it?

You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know.

Part of what I want to do is sort of reclaim my story - it belongs to me and to my children, who have to live with whoever their mother is.

A story in Asimov's is read by hundreds of thousands of people.

To me any given story has its appropriate form. There might be some story I get involved with that's begging to be a graphic novel, so that will have to be that way.

When anybody starts out with a memoir, you get the impulse to tell your own story with your own voice, and you get all that out in one fell swoop sometimes.

For me, the drive is storytelling. To be a part of an art that tells a story and to be a catalyst, a color in that, is very exciting.

I prefer playing characters that are going through turmoil. Most movie characters are just in service to the story.

It was deeply important for me to understand where Mandela came from. Because we know where he was going, and that's a famous story, but who was he? Where did he come from? What was his upbringing?

Most of us live in a fog. It's like life is a movie we arrived to 20 minutes late. You know something important seems to be going on. But we can't figure out the story. We don't know what part we're supposed to play or what the plot is.

Exploitation is a harsh word, I know that, but on a certain level, to me that is the central Hollywood story.

Curiously enough, I was one of the first to have some say in Hollywood. By sheer accident, I had four successes in a row in the early 30's and, although I was still in my 20's, I demanded and received approval of cast, story and director. I don't know how I got away with it, but I did!

I didn't act like I was there. I just got into the story.

When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works.

When I was a kid going to the movies, we'd go because Bogart was in the movie, or Cagney, or John Wayne. We didn't know what the story was about or anything.

Everyone is treating it like a Hollywood story. In Madison, it's a neighborhood story.

There are a lot of laughs in this movie, but it's not just about the laughs. It's really about the story, about a guy who finds his soul and realizes what's truly important.

What you never want to do is have a story that doesn't track emotionally, because then you're going joke to joke and you're going to fatigue the audience. The only thing that's going to string them to the next joke is how successful the previous joke is.

The biblical story is in dialogue with the other stories of its time. And if the Bible can be in dialogue with other cultures, why can't the people who are descendants of the Bible be in dialogue with other cultures?

I'm going to tell you the story about the geese which fly 5,000 miles from Canada to France. They fly in V-formation but the second ones don't fly. They're the subs for the first ones. And then the second ones take over - so it's teamwork.

Only in England would 'professor gets divorced and remarried' be a story.

The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.

I always saw two sides of life. I saw the dudes who would be the gangsta, big-time guys on the block, but would also be dedicated fathers. It was kind of weird to see that dual story that everybody has.

Critics? How do they happen? I know how it happened to me. I would send a poem or story to a magazine and they would say this doesn't suit our needs precisely but on the other hand you sound interesting. Would you be interested in doing a review?

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas.

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

But me contradicting a news story is not going to make my words fact. It will just create a new news story.

And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they're going to go and see the story you're in.

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not respectable - but I think that can also add to the glory of it.

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.

I wish we didn't have to tell this story.

When I do my collection, it is in a way my own story.

What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.

Nothing splendid was ever created in cold blood. Heat is required to forge anything. Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart.

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.

We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.

In choosing any role, I ask the same questions: what kind of part is it? is the role challenging? does the director have a vision? is the story moving? etc.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon.

I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.

I want to tell a story and shape it all the way through to the end.

I never fixed a story. I didn't make judgments, I let the listener make judgments. When I got to the end of the story, if it had a moral, I let the listener find it.

I love involving actors at all levels - and they have to know that I want to hear their contributions, with dialogue, with story suggestions, with script changes, whatever.

I can't think of a story that doesn't have something terrible in it. Otherwise, it's dull. So when I embarked into the world of picture books, my first thought was to do something about the dark.

It's harder to write a story with just two people in a room than with 50 characters.

The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

The story of a love is not important-what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

If a man's fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.

'Detroit 1-8-7' - the numbers are police slang for murder - is filmed in that blue-collar Michigan city, providing a flavor of authenticity. Detroit offers a unique visual landscape that tells the story of the city and what it's been through.

Watching a movie from beginning to end is like reading, because even though what you see are images, they are telling you a story.

My drawing skills probably froze around when I was 18... Now I'm more interested in the story, how the drawings, the layout can help express the stories and communicate them.

We try to be driven by what's a good story, what's truthful, and the drama of what happens next.

Once you become the story off-screen, you are less likely to be the onscreen one.

Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.

I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.