Phil Foglio Quotes

Ever since I was young, 14 or 15, I wondered if you could write a book that combined the visceral thrill of watching a movie with the total immersion you feel when you're inside a good book. And I had some success as a screenwriter before I began writing books.

There are artists, true performers that have come before me who have been a big inspiration to me. I hope I do the same for others.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you're a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you're casually talking to says something that makes you so mad - you can create an entire scenario around that.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.

I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

I grew up when I was 15 when I had my first opportunity in movies. I watched every great movie for a year and a half, and since then I've asked myself how I can emulate such artistry. That's really my motivation. I want to do something as good as my heroes have done.

I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.

I very seldom compose anything in my head which later finds its way into text, except character names sometimes - I'm often very much inspired by things that I misunderstand.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter.

I've just always been around great songwriters. To me, they were the standard.

I always start from scratch with a character - they're never based on anyone else. You get ideas of what people look like, and I'm a great people watcher. You can draw inspiration from people.

I think you are who you are, and your kids will see who you are. So you'd better be a good person, because they are going to see it, and that's going to shape them. They are going to become you.

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.

I feel like reading really defined me as a writer because I lived my life outside of my own body for so much of my life and I loved it. I've always been a reader. I think living all those stories served me to naturally take that next step to creating.

It's weird because every movie that I do is always a role that reminds me of a role that 'Pac would have done. And when 'Pac did 'Juice,' he was young - probably like 21, 22 - something like that. And that's my favorite actor. I know it might be weird to say, but he was talented on screen, and that's who I studied.

I am the product of Denny O'Neil in many ways, I carry forth a lot of what Denny instilled in me.