In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.
I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.
Exploitation is a harsh word, I know that, but on a certain level, to me that is the central Hollywood story.
I worked in Hollywood as a reader and a would-be writer for about 6 years before I sold my first story.
I don’t always, or even usually, read stories from beginning to end. I start anywhere and proceed in either direction. A story is not like a road to follow, it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while.
The story fails but your faith in the importance of doing the story doesn’t fail.
Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.
The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.
It is the privilege of tale-tellers to open their story in an inn, the free rendezvous of all travellers, and where the humour of each displays itself, without ceremony or restraint.
Please tell me you did not bring me out here so you could tell me a very boring story about your sister.
All the stories are true.
Well, why did you kill Jeremiah? And don’t bother feeding me some story about how you just happened to wander along after he spontaneously died. I know you did this.
All that running and getting nowhere, he thought. Story of my life.
Without conflict there is no plot, without hope there is no story.
Appearances are significant, and never more than in politics. You can always sway the crowd, provided you have a good story.
I saw ‘The 39 Clues’ as a potential vehicle for doing some education in a fun way – to take some of these amazing stories from history, dust them off and make them alive.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the level of success I’ve had. I was just writing stories for my own sons.
Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.
As far as I am concerned, the first episode of Buffy was the beginning of my career. It was the first time I told a story from start to finish the way I wanted.
The goal is always about the next story. It’s always about the thing I haven’t done before. It’s about learning, or it’s about becoming better, and it’s about whatever story grabs hold of me.