Janet Fitch Quotes

The enemy of good television is boredom and predictability.

So much of television is incredibly predictable. You watch the first five minutes and you know where it's going to go. If you can just create an element of surprise in both the storytelling and tone of a show, you're going to be way ahead of the pack.

Be unpredictable, be real, be interesting. Tell a good story.

The element of surprise is the most important thing and what keeps me interested in writing. I can feel it if I've written that predictable or boring line, and I will carry that around with me all day.

When I go to the cinema, I'm often frustrated because I can guess exactly what is going to happen about ten minutes into the screening. So, when I'm working on a subject, I'm always looking for the element of surprise.

Surprise is key in all art.

Theater is about surprises and things that you haven't seen before on stage.

Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.

Lack of consistency is a weakness shared by all nations.

So the characters that I choose, I like to make sure that they have depth and that they have some sort of bite. It's more fun.

Mainly, what I like to do is keep things varied and not get in a rut, not tell the same stories over and over.

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting.

I am passionate about keeping the human dimension in things. You have to keep the rough edges and the inconsistencies, that's what makes it interesting. I've always striven to be as sloppy as possible.

I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect.

The clammy hand of consistency has never rested for long upon my shoulder.

When people go to the theater, people say they want something different, but what they really want is something the same with slight permutations. To really not know what is going to happen next is a hard thing.

My goal is always to make something unpredictable that feels inevitable in the end. It's getting harder to do that. Audiences are so sophisticated and so smart.

We all have shortcomings.

I always try to incorporate something in every book that I've never used before. Hopefully, spontaneity will keep readers reading.

I like actors who are sort of different and eccentric - not what you expect.

There are always holes in anyone's game.

I don't try to make things mysterious on purpose; I just try to make them interesting.

There's weaknesses in every fighter.

Everyone has technical flaws - no matter how many runs you score.

From a storytelling perspective, perfection is death.