David McCandless Quotes

Fiction is no longer the dominant storytelling device of our time. In the 19th century it worked great, and fiction was the king, but it's not the king any more.

People think in narratives - in beginnings, middles and ends. The danger when you edit something too severely is that it no longer makes sense; worse still, it leaves people with the disquieting impression that something is being hidden.

I think people were a little bit too concerned about what I would or would not be allowed to say. So let me just get that out of the way and get on to the business of telling, you know, a story, or two, or three, or 15. And also to say, "Okay, look. Here it is, don't worry about it. The restrictions and the watered-down and all the stuff that you thought was gonna happen really isn't the case." So we done got that out the way, and now we can just kind of move on.

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.

I've had frustrated storytelling juices that have been lying dormant for a long time, and I guess the documentary was a way of me telling a story that I felt most qualified to tell. And I loved it, and I'd love to do something else someday, probably more narrative-based. But I'm in no rush.

I think a play can do almost anything, because it's also a static form, much more so than in a movie. In a movie you can move the scenery, you can do anything any way. A cartoon, happens in a limited amount of space and a limited amount of time, and you can only get so many words before the reader's gonna get impatient. All of these forms that I enjoy are in a sense a slight of hand, where you have to suggest much more than you really show. You have to, in a sense, seduce the reader and trick the reader or the audience into going with you.

If you aren't telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died.

I think television has become such an interesting place for characters and for incredible storytelling. Half of what I watch are television shows that I've become obsessed with. I just think that it's opened up so much, to be such an interesting and creative medium, and so many wonderful directors and actors are moving to television because it is a great medium for telling stories and for creating a character over a long period of time.

I would definitely not rule out doing television, in the future, because I think it's a great medium for telling stories.

I think, for me, I have to remember that I'm telling a story in some way.

I don't think I've ever really pursued telling my story, but I think things come to you at the right time.

I love stories. When I tell a story, I try to think of people sitting around a crackling campfire.

In New York City there are interesting characters and there are interesting stories. There's a story on every street corner. I love it. I think that's what really attracts me to making films.

I enjoy telling these stories that I ultimately think get a disservice on a lot of network television. I enjoy getting people to change their perspective. I enjoy pushing myself into learning and understanding things from a very different point of view. It's scary to do that. It's scary to kind of put yourself in somebody else's position.

Once you have your character sitting right there in your head, all you really need to do is wind them up, put them down, and simply write down what they do, say, or think.

I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.

People think drama drives story, but I think the comedy is really the heart and soul.

These days movies are cut very quickly and sort of fragmented and I tend to do slower moving stories where people develop relationships with people. I think I'd probably do a lot better if I lived in Europe - I think it's more of a European sensibility somehow.

When you think about justifiable anger in one's personal life, we look at those scenarios in everyday life and through our story with a superhero, we heighten them.

I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

Everything has its cycle. I think it's appropriate for us to be ending now. But the beauty of storytelling, and the beauty of film and television is that it continues on.

I make a distinction between true and real. I think that the story is true, it’s just not real. That’s what a parable is. It takes things that we all know are real, and it takes life events that actually happens, and it weaves them into a fiction that allows truth to actually be embedded.

I think sometimes a narrative can come out of a single word.

If you're a certain type of actor, then eventually stepping into a director's shoes is a natural transition. I've always been the actor who's very focused on the narrative, where my character is in the story, and how I can benefit the story. I've always had a technical aspect of what the lens is, how the camera is going to move, how I can feed the information the director applies within that move. If you're that type of actor, narrative-based, technically proficient, the next step is actually not that far.

It's my experience that endings are never easy, and I think I'm not alone among filmmakers or writers in this.