Nadine Gordimer Quotes

So much of writing is about what characters don't say, and in the early drafts, sometimes things get overwritten.

When you go to a movie, it's about what's not being said. I tried to bring that to Greg Sumner. It was always about what's not being said.

Filmmaking is not about what we see - it's a very misconceived notion; it's about what we don't see.

A story is told as much by silence as by speech.

Sometimes, what's not said is just as important to the writing as what is said. As a writer, we have our voices heard. I think that, at oftentimes, the ability to allow the dialogue to recede properly into the world of the film is also a really valid sort of way to be a writer, I think.

The script will point you in certain directions and I go the opposite if I can. I try do do one thing and tell a different story with my eyes. I believe what's more interesting is always what's not being said.

The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.

What isn't said is as important as what is said.

As much as movies are about the words that you're saying, they're also about what's not said, the silent moments.

I'm obsessed with subtexts. I love that we often don't say what we feel. That gap between the two. I like it when actors reveal a lot without having to say it.

I think it's not about what you say; it's about what you don't say.

We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't.

Anytime I feel like I am beginning to explain the plot or characters too much my stomach churns. I like stories that let the characters speak for themselves and don't give you all the information.

I don't necessarily set out to teach or say anything in particular in my writing. Morals and themes come out as I'm telling the tale.

A novel is about people.

Half of a broadcast show, in my experience, is things happening, and the other half is people talking about how they feel about the things that happened. And so there's this sense of everyone saying their subtext out loud.

Bigger stories are made out of longer acquaintance with fact and character, but I also love the tiny stories in which almost everything has to be inferred and imagined.

Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.

I really just choose stories that are compelling, have interesting trends and characters, and hopefully say something larger about society.

It's great when you see things on a massive scale and you see these huge sets, but it's not the be-all and end-all - it can be about characters as well.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I've written, are stories driven by characters.

Roles don't fascinate me. It is the narrative, the screenplay that is fascinating.

I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story.

I didn't like characters that were one- or two-dimensional. I liked a guy to have a lot of different levels to him and layers, and I think I pretty well succeeded with Thanos.

Hemingway's short story 'Hills Like White Elephants' is a classic of its kind. It illustrates Hemingway's 'iceberg theory,' which requires that a story find its effectiveness by hiding more than it reveals.