If a novelist has created vivid characters, interesting relationships, settings the reader can easily imagine, and intriguing stories, a screenwriter has loads to work with. The challenge comes with deciding what to cut and what to keep.
I always say that the characters in Jane Austen’s original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what’s going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others.
My day job is making TV shows.
If you write really good material, the rest just falls into place. There’s really no trick to it.
If a movie has more characters than an audience can keep track of, the audience will get confused and lose interest in the story.
I’ve been a lifelong horror fan, but at the same time, I would say 90 percent of my reading is biographies and nonfiction history.
I’ve always enjoyed reading history, particularly presidential biographies.
I want to be judged harshly because that forces me to really sit down and focus.
I think any period in history can be adapted into interesting fiction, as long as you approach the actual history with respect.
There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it – mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction – I don’t know if I want to do that anymore.
Of all the weapons in the world, love is the most dangerous.
All I ask is that my final months be happy ones, and that I be permitted a husband who will see to my proper Christian beheading and burial.
Thank you, sir, but I am perfectly content being the bride of death.
I think zombies have always been an easy metaphor for hard times. Because they’re this big, faceless, brainless group of evil things that will work tirelessly to destroy you and think of nothing else.
Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail, such flourish, that afterwards a man could swear it had been his own memory, and not a tale at all.
An accomplished woman is one who has a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing and the modern languages; she must be well trained in the fighting styles of the Kyoto masters and the modern tactics and weaponry of Europe.
No ninjas! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without any ninjas! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your safety.
Elizabeth sheathed her sword, knelt behind him, and strangled him to death with his own large bowel.
The business of Mr. Bennett’s life was to keep his daughters alive. The business of Mrs. Bennett’s was to get them married.
I would much prefer their minds to be engaged in the deadly arts than clouded with dreams of marriage and fortune, as your own so clearly is!