David Copperfield Quotes

If there are 100 people, I don't anticipate all 100 liking my scenario - but I write it so at least one or two of them will love and get really into that particular story.

Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You're absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can't do for you.

I like my characters to be ones I think about long after I've finished reading the script.

As an actor, you always want to feel like what you're doing is making a difference to the story.

I don't think with any book you get used to people falling in love with the story. It's been incredible just to realize your books are being read. It's a pretty amazing feeling.

The first thing, when I read the script, is that I need to care about what happens and feel compelled by the story and engaged by the characters. It needs to resonate with me, even if what the characters are going through is not something that I have experienced in my life. I have to feel like it has some sort of meaning to me.

I tell stories. Because I believe you can do things that joke tellers can't do, and that is, bring your audience along.

I think that's a hallmark of a really good story that it has readers that it speaks to more than others.

If the story is good enough, if it's imaginative enough, if it's moving enough it is going to reach deeper than the level of sheer information and change somebody's life two degrees. That is an enormous achievement.

'Rocky' is a movie that just happens to be about boxing. It's really about characters and story lines and relationships and all those things, and the backdrop is boxing. You can go back and watch the final fight in 'Rocky' a thousand times. If you dig that movie, if you like the characters, you'll watch the whole movie over and over.

It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.

It's always been my hope that I would write a story that would inspire and would connect with people in a way that would touch hearts.

Lastly get emotionally connected to your story so you can deliver it, you know, if you can't deliver the emotions to your script there's no point to your story. Story is the key.

I've been spoiled by this project. I was given the script and went in to read, realizing that this was a powerful story and one that wasn't told very often.

Every story makes a promise to the reader. Actually, two promises, one emotional and one intellectual, since the function of stories is to make us both feel and think.

If the characters are compelling, readers will follow anywhere.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

The audience wants to be attracted not by the critics, but by a great story. You must deliver to the audience emotion - and when I say emotion, I mean suspense, drama, love.

Your structure and format may not be perfect, and you may not have picked the perfect franchise, but if I pick up a script, and the characters are real, whole, complicated and come from a place of somebody who really is feeling it, that's what people remember.

As long as your storytelling and emotional depth are intact, that's what people will focus on.

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

I changed my mind because of a scene between Howard Cunningham and Richie. The father-son situation was written so movingly, I fell in love with the project.

It's hard to be scared if you don't feel for a character, because you don't care if they die or live.

If you care about the characters, then whatever scary thing happens to them, you feel it even more.

The power of story and the power of a well-crafted film or television show is really all you need to speak to people. I think Hollywood is sort of catching up to that.