James M. Cain Quotes

And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters' mouths, you'll find that you've let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.

Noah Baumbach writing is really wonderful. I think the way he plays out each character with a unique voice is really impressive, and rhythmically his dialogue works.

I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.

There's a perception that good writing is writing which runs smoothly. But smooth-running prose can work against what you're trying to express in a novel.

I want a script to affect me in some way. I am usually drawn to character studies, scripts about real people and the world we live in not some fantasy.

Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .

One piece of advice I have is: Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldn’t rely on it, because it’s not guaranteed and it’s not permanent and it’s not sufficient. So work hard, fall in love with the writing — the characters, the story, the words, the themes — and make sure that you are who you are regardless of your life circumstances. That way, when the good things come, they don’t warp you, and when the bad things hit you, you don’t fall apart.

A lot of people think that they are really cool because they don't outline. In my writing group, they would say, "I will never outline. I let the characters take me." C'mon, man - I outline the story, but it's only like one page. It's a list of possible reversals in the story, like things where everything will just change because of this certain reveal or this certain action. Then I start really digging into the character because, to me, I don't care what the story is.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.

I love the way Damon Lindelof writes. It's almost like he was channeling me and he had my voice, even though the territory that those lines cover is unpredictable, and goes from raw emotion to laugh out loud funny but always true.

but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

I've had that situation where I start writing somebody really miserable, and in order to make the story come alive, I have to give them a vote of confidence, make him vulnerable or wounded. But in real life, you often meet people who, in that particular moment, actually shouldn't get a vote of confidence.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

The best, most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any particular point and have to question yourself; but normally, dialogue writes itself.

People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.

I hate the term "mystery". That's not what I write. I think the Scarpetta novels are much more character-driven than an average puzzle solver. Writing should be like a pane of glass - there's another world on the other side and your vision carries you there, but you're not aware of having passed through a barrier to get there.

Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

I hear people talk in my head and I write it down. I choose where they live and how they dress to be real. That person wouldn't wear that. That person wouldn't say that. She can't afford to live like that. All that bullshit that so many movies have in them. I don't want to see that.

Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

I'm an actor, and, beyond that, the thing I do most compulsively is writing. So I come at it very much from this sense of character. I get interested in people. And I feel confident in my capacity to absorb and manifest the characteristics of people. I have a real auditory hang-up for dialogue; re-creating the way people talk really is an addiction in my brain.

I think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.

To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we’re polymaths. That’s just the act of all good writing.