Paul Auster Quotes

I come from a filmmaking tradition and a storytelling background. So somehow I've emerged like a mutant who can straddle both worlds.

I want to do film and TV. I want to make good stories. I want to write; I want to be more involved.

All of the good movies are based on how that story was told. And you cannot do it with a bad script, that's for sure, no matter who.

I love the finality of film. When you make a movie, you know the beginning, middle, and end.

My life is making movies. I like storytelling, and I've got a lot of stories that are stored up in my head that I hope to get out before my time is up.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.

The success of the movie industry comes from the story. And the story comes from somebody putting something down on paper.

I'm always looking for interesting stories, and I feel in independent film there's more opportunity.

I have realised there are so many stories which can be told beautifully on screen. It's important to be part of such films.

If you have skills to pull off even a four-hour film, people will go and watch it.

I have been in advertising and I know my craft well, but ultimately in cinema every scene has to matter, and that has to do with the writing.

I don't just look at things as an actor. I've also written several films, so I look at it as a storyteller and I know if something worked and should have been in there for the benefit of the story and the benefit of the character.

I just love film making; all aspects of it. I love the idea of writing but I just don't feel like I could really do it. I didn't even graduate from school.

I'm very interested in film making. It's telling a story, fiction or non-fiction. I have been filmed quite a lot. Contrary to popular belief, filming isn't glamorous. It can be wearingly repetitious, as the same shot is taken over and over again.

Pfft, who wants to make a movie about a guy in a house?

The craft of putting together a performance on film or television is incredibly intricate; you're putting together a story that is completely out of order, that you have to make some sense of, that you have to keep some coherence to the story, to the character.

You always have three movies that you have to reduce into one. You have the screenplay. And then, you do a workshop and you add more scenes. And then, on the day you shoot, there's more action and interaction. It's like a souffle. It has a tendency to just grow and explode, and it's just too long.

You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

However much I may like to talk about or be interested in a more philosophical or moral agenda, [film] is, ultimately, about narrative. And it's about telling stories that are engaging and dramatic.

I wanted people to know that I'm not just a guy who does weird videos on the Internet. I actually am a filmmaker, and I can tell stories, and I can create something that's 90 minutes long that feels just like any other movie you see in the theater, and hopefully enjoy.

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences - is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

A director can come from anywhere, but having a story background, if you have nothing else, is probably a good thing to have because it's really the one tool you need.

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.