Stephen McCauley Quotes

I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

I do sometimes play characters that are a bit ambiguous. You've got to be brave about that sort of stuff. I like the sense of people not feeling too secure, not immediately knowing what they have in front of them.

In tragedy, it's hard to find a good resolution; it's not black and white: it's a big fog of gray.

Writing is about confidence and wondering what the point of anything is.

When you've been living in hope for a long time as I have, suddenly you realize that certainty is far more desirable than hope.

We all desire things that we believe we cannot have, and so my films reflect that again and again. The mystery must be solved, the goal attained.

You never know if you're a writer. You can't trust it. If you woke up and said, 'I'm a writer,' it would be gone. You wouldn't see anything for miles - even the dust would be running away.

If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life - that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment - that would be the perfect state.

Would it be possible that I should not in any degree succeed? I can scarcely think so. Ah delusive hope, how much further wilt thou lead me?

I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.

I accept the fact that some things don't go the way you hope.

Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.

Sometimes you have a poem that you really want to write and it never happens.

I think there are certain questions that get asked in comics over and over again, and people want definitive answers, but I feel like there shouldn't be definitive answers.

I'd say there are two kinds of theater: one you end with an answer, one you end with a question.

Movies tie things up in an arbitrary length of time, but I have always liked things that aren't fully realised.

It is unwise to wish everything explained.

Every great story leaves you questioning. If all of the questions are answered, and everything is resolved, it's boring. There's nothing to talk about afterwards.

I think that's the great thing about all 'Black Mirror' episodes - it really leaves you with this feeling of not knowing how to feel.

Hope is in some respects a thing more brilliant, more vivifying, than fruition. What we have looked forward to with eager and earnest aspiration is never in all respects equal to the picture we had formed of it. The very uncertainty enhances the enjoyment.

I get the feeling that my songs aren't that dark. There is a cynicism but humour also - it's not depression upon depression upon depression. It's a blend.

You see it in the stuff I've done at Laika: I've always tried to make movies that have an artful blend of darkness and light, intensity and warmth. That have a thinking brain and a strong beating heart at the centre of it.

There are times when your films don't work, your phone doesn't ring and you wonder what you have done.

I have no illusions of the future. Or maybe it's all illusion. I don't know. I've always been ready for it.