Roald Dahl Quotes

I enjoy receiving and giving realistic fiction, for both children and adults, with strong characters, beautiful language, and humane visions.

I feel like the books were just written like a movie. You read it and you can just kind of see everything. Before I went in to read with the director, I read the first book and I loved it. I didn't realize how good the writing was. And then I went in and read with Gary Ross, and that was it.

Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

I can be so blown away by story lines.

Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author's hopes and fears and ideas about good and evil.

Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

I think good art should always be entertaining, or at least give pleasure of some sort. And my chief goal as a writer has always been to tell a good story and give my readers a good time.

You know, I remember watching Morgan Freeman when he did the two Alex Cross movies, and he's so confident that he's going to knock the scene dead. And I'm really confident that I can tell a good story now, so I just don't worry about things.

In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained, but because they feel something else will happen; that the experience will take them beyond themselves and show them something they haven't seen before.

Any good story can galvanize a person, make him/her think about things a different way, reassess their own motives and needs, but that's never my intent. That's an unintended consequence of me just trying to entertain, to write what we used to call 'ripping yarns.'

Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it's a good starting place for me.

I'm a good storyteller.

As a writer, I always think about who my prototype actors are, in my brain. It's helpful, as a writer, to think about that.

I think I'm always drawn to a good story.

It's great fun if you get a good piece of writing and you can pretend to be someone else, tell a story that needs to be told, make some kind of connection. I've always fancied myself as a leading man, but I really doubt whether anyone else sees me that way.

I very seldom, very seldom, even know what my characters look like.

What I look for in any character, good or bad, is whether I can hear him speak. If I can imagine him that clearly, then I can write about him.

Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to that to make me feel like I've ended up where I wanted to be.

I just enjoyed telling stories. I enjoyed watching films and reading and becoming someone else. I spent a lot of time on my own when I was younger; I enjoyed my own company and still do, so it was a source of escapism.

We try to be driven by what's a good story, what's truthful, and the drama of what happens next.

To provide background and physical description and all the rest is of course vital to fiction, but vital only insofar as such detail is in the service of a richly imagined story, rather than in the service of good botany or good philosophy or good geography.

Often I think the novels I read won't make very good movies - I better not say which I'm looking at for potential films! - but it's nice to have an excuse to just sit and read for a whole day.

The best fiction stays with you and changes you.