Meg Tilly Quotes

If we remained perpetually infatuated, we couldn't eat, sleep or work.

Rowling is a luminous storyteller. I love her sense of humor and the intricate wizarding world she built around Hogwarts. I think all writers aspire to be like her, to capture readers like she does. But I didn't think about 'Harry Potter' when I wrote 'The Bone Season.'

My obsession with James Franco borders on the unhealthy.

People can get obsessed with romance, they can get obsessed with political paranoia, they can get obsessed with horror. It's isn't the fault of the subject matter that creates the obsession, I don't think.

I watched 'Freaks and Geeks,' and I was like, 'Oh, if you write about your own personal experiences, and if you're specific about it both in what happened and how you felt about it, it can make for scenes that are really compelling.' For the rest of college, I was basically ripping off 'Freaks and Geeks' with plays I wrote and stuff like that.

One day, I discovered that a couple of people had written 'fanfic' - stories of their own based on my characters. Just the thought of people thinking that hard and deeply about something I've written is incredible.

It's a very dull thing to watch, a writer at work. So dull that whole casts of characters show up just to watch the boring writer writing.

Bunny boiler is now part of our language, and I'm proud of that.

Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.

Not long ago I made a list of Doc Ford books I would like to do, and I came up with 11 pretty easily. I like to let the characters go their own ways and see what happens. I find them fascinating.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

I knew as far back as 2001 that I would write a book called 'A Visit From the Goon Squad,' though I had no idea what kind of book it would be.

I make notes about things I see in films that really affect me, like the ending of 'Jules and Jim.' I think about how I can utilize things in my work. And I have a team of people who keep me down to earth.

The deal is such that when I begin writing something, I open a door, and those characters come in, and then they won't leave, and so I live with them every day, all day. They are there with me when I'm driving my kids to school, when I'm standing in line at the grocery store.

Nothing like falling in love with a dead actress to prove your sanity.

The genealogy of fictional characters can become an obsession, like train-spotting, and should be firmly resisted.

One of the first things that helped me to understand certain things about writing was seeing 'The Iceman Cometh' in the Village when I was a kid, before I ever became a newspaperman, and realizing that the world I knew could also be the subject of some amazing stuff.

My history is that I will create a character, and they will have a book to themselves, and then I'll integrate the character into the larger world of all my books.

I've never been interested in watching or reading anything because it's the hero's story. I don't feel the need to be inspired by the character or learn a lesson. I feel the need to be engaged by them.

Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.

I learned so much from the writing on 'King of the Hill', which I thought was just magnificent. They would let real moments happen in this animated, one-dimensional world. I feel like I've been in school this whole time.

The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O'Connor's short story collection 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.'

Robert Bolt's storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to.

I think 'Dark Blue' came to me while I was doing a project in London. I read it, and the character immediately popped out at me.

I never... it's a hard thing: when I think about projects, I don't come off something and go, 'I really want to make a sci-fi film next,' or 'I really want to do a political thriller next.' It's really coming across - I'm really fascinated, partly by world building, but also about the character and what the journey is.