Derek Cianfrance Quotes

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.

If I ever wrote a script myself, it would be strongly emotional material.

I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

I can't tell a story just by deciding to tell a story, do it in a didactic way. I need to have my own emotion, to feel, 'Wow, there is something I can discover, I can create.'

You're reluctant to give too much away when you're going to put it out there for other people. It's harder writing your truest fears and loves and guilts, because you're not sure when you're writing the right story.

You learn a lot, writing fiction.

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.

I'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.

I use myself for each part. Naturally, it's my body, it's my soul, it's my feelings. That's the only way I know how to work. I couldn't pretend.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I'll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

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

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

Personally, I read a lot of scripts.

I hardly ever think about audience. I just try to tell a story for me. I write the kind of story I would like to read.

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

The materials of the novelist must be real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual observation.

I quickly realised that it is difficult to get started when writing a novel. You have this dream of what you want to create, but it is like walking around a swimming pool and hesitating to jump in because the water is too cold.

Writing film scripts is the hardest thing in the world. A script has to go to five or six drafts, and you need the feedback of other people and to keep coming back with a fresh eye, honing it down.

I want to be inside Nic Pizzolatto's brain.

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are.

I never dreamed that the little ditties I wrote about annoying customers or bagel recipes would turn into a full-length musical comedy. But a very wise person told me to 'write what you know'. So I did.

I write a story as if it were a letter to someone and essentially, that's what you do.

To write a story, I think you really have to open yourself up to the world.