Danai Gurira Quotes

I love storytelling so for me to get behind a story and get in there early in its infancy and kind of develop it in the early stages was something I really wanted to be a part of.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I had written a story. I wrote the story out of some desperation, really, and I didn't know I was writing a story, and it took me years. And when I finished, a friend of mine had the idea that the story should be read as a monologue in a theater.

Stories develop from things I read and also from my own experiences and experiences of people I know.

I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through.

I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.

People have asked me a lot, 'What comes first? The pictures or the story? The story or the picture?' It's hard to describe because often they seem to come at the same time. I'm seeing images while I'm thinking of the story.

I love the early process of asking questions about a story and deciding which questions matter most.

I'm a storyteller. I'm always willing to serve the story, a story I believe in, in whatever way is necessary. If I need to write the story I believe in, I will write it. If I've been offered to act in a story that I truly believe in, I will happily do that, but I'm a storyteller. That's something I'm so thankful for.

I love telling stories, and I'm a born storyteller. That's what I do, and that's what I want to continue to do.

I was deeply infected with storytelling from the get go, and I truly love it.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever.

I enjoy looking at words on paper and visualizing how to make them come to life. As a director, the creative process is really amazing.

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?

I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.

I don't ever want to impose something on the story. I want the story to tell me.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

I like storytelling, and I feel more confident as the years have gone on about my ability to do that.

While many of my musicals deal with big themes and ideas, I don't intentionally go looking to write shows like that. A story will interest me, and then somewhere along the way, I discover that hidden inside are these epic themes.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.