Nick Hornby Quotes

There's some of me in all my characters.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

At the end of the day, it's really, really difficult to make a brand-new show, to write a pilot where you have to introduce characters and everyone has to kind of be dynamic and have something different for themselves.

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

That's one of those things that will really hurt me personally, if I label a character or think about what it might do if it were to do well. I just try to do a good job with it.

One of the things that happens when you write characters - and maybe this is my own sentimentality - is that I always find I have an instinct to protect them.

I can't really iterate what I look for in a script. It's a very subjective thing. Like an organic attachment you have with the script and characters.

It always comes down to script and characters.

I love all the characters I write.

There are fragments of me in all my characters.

I always try to make my characters people, and yet I always want to entertain.

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character 'represents.' Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn't until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc.

I am not an analytical writer. Once I flesh out my characters and decide on the elements of my plot, the story unfolds in my head almost as though it was a movie reel.

You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know?

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on.

How I work is I work from of very character-driven place. And I trust the writers.

I always believed in my characters. I lived them.

Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.

It always helps me connect with characters, to think about what music they respond to.

I like films to be complete in their written form.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.