Joseph Fiennes Quotes

Obviously any fiction is going to be a combination of what is invented, what is overheard, what is experienced, what is experienced by people close to you, what you are told, what you have read, all mixed together into this kind of soup which, like any good soup, at the end you cannot really distinguish the ingredients.

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

I write about people I think are interesting, and then I discuss it with my editor, and she decides if she thinks it will be interesting to children as well. If I have no great interest in the subject, I find the work to be terribly boring. And if I find the person interesting, I love the research part and, by extension, the writing as well.

Because it was one of my favorites from the Arthurian legend, one of the things that I really enjoyed doing was the legend of the crystal cave. In my head, it was fun to imagine what it was going to look like because there was a lot of CGI involved, in seeing visions of the future reflected within crystals.

The idea led me into the research, which continues to give me more ideas for the story.

In the case of the 'Saint' movie, I did do some research. I visited a few shelters. But usually, my stuff just comes out. I don't have any control over that.

A lot of my ideas for books come from newspaper articles. But I don't like to be actively looking for ideas.

I'll look at the script and I'll try to find as many books, movies, and pieces of music that I think are going to feed each scene or the character as a whole.

I get ideas from my own personal experiences, from my imagination, and from my research and from old stories.

I like that it's challenging - that when I'm writing, I feel as if I'm pouring everything I have into the story until there's nothing left and I have to begin thinking about a new world and set of circumstances to research and explore.

So, the combination of looking at lots of different people and how they react to each other and how they relate to each other and waiting for that inspiration is the thing that allows me to keep writing.

I always like when things are loosely based on real events. That always makes it more interesting because there's a lot of research you can do.

What I often do when I'm writing, if I can't find that story, I go out and I hunt for it.

I've done quite a few things based on real events or real people, and I think that's always really interesting that you can read about them or, if you're lucky, you can meet them.

Even the two novels I've written were based on true stories. It's how I'm wired - real life is fascinating and fantastical enough. The kind of journalism I did unpeeled lids from cans otherwise sealed.

Good films that get made are so few and far between. I want to write and direct more, but only so I can keep a fresh perspective.

There have been so many different versions of the legend and of 'Camelot,' so what I wanted to do was strip it all back, and go back to the beginning and tell the story of Arthur, from the beginning of the relationship between Merlin and Arthur.

When I'm writing fiction, I read nonfiction or biographies. Now I'm watching very old movies or old foreign films. I don't immerse myself in whatever's going on in whatever area I'm working in.

I'm not particularly inventive. If you left me in а room and told me to write a novel, I wouldn't be able to do it. But if you gave me two years in a public library around the corner, I could. It all comes from sort of mixing the true and the invented. I'm not a fabulist. I'm more of a reporter.

A writer's brain is like a magician's hat. If you're going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.

You just want to find a story that grabs you and that you've never seen before, but somehow you can't imagine it not existing. It's like a good book. What makes a good book is hard to say. I don't know. I just look for something that grabs me. I don't have a way of looking for a project, and I don't know many people that do. It's just year to year, and what's going around and what's there.

I remember when we were doing "Batman Begins" and to watch Chris Nolan go from "Memento" to "Batman" and take that leap from such a smaller size to a big movie, that's inspiring. But those movies are their own type of art and you have to really understand it and really know that world and I would have to take a long time to figure that out.Because my brain doesn't naturally go there.

For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.

When working on and writing a film, I'm often more of a sponge than other times, aware of what's going on around me.