John Tiffany Quotes

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

It's always about finding the right balance between answering some questions and raising new ones to keep your story going.

I tell stories. Because I believe you can do things that joke tellers can't do, and that is, bring your audience along.

To me, fiction is the single best way there is - to me, it's the most profound way - of dealing with questions that have no answers.

For me, acting is like a pool you dive into. If you're lucky, you find what you need, then get out again.

It takes two guys to tell a story, paint a picture, so our audience can be entertained and brought into the match. You need to suck people in emotionally to a match, and it takes both parties to paint that picture.

At the end of the day, whether it's on film or on stage or for a crowd of however many at Kenwood House, my job is to make sure people have a good time and come away with a feeling and a story.

I make videos about people's stories in a way that is human.

History, like journalism, is ever a journey outwards, and you must report back what you find and no more.

Acting and singing are actually very similar because they're both telling a story.

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.

Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You're absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can't do for you.

Every part of the country has its story to tell, so I'm always looking for the next place to be.

I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me.

I write for the same reason I read: to find out what's going to happen.

When you're a storyteller, part of the process of storytelling is the kind of communion you form with the audience to whom you're telling your story. If some segment of the audience doesn't like that story, it doesn't feel good.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

Audiences are very willing to be taken somewhere, and to ask an audience beforehand what it wants is probably, I think, a mistake. Much better you should tell them what you want and hope they agree with it.

I'm a fan of great storytelling.

When you go to the theater, if you're really involved in the play, you don't think about it - you're in it.

The place I begin is with story. If the audience doesn't care about that, then it doesn't matter how amazing the spectacle is. My central philosophy is that people go to the movies to be told a story, not to see stuff blow up.

I think that's what we're all trying to do as actors, is create some sort of passion from people and allow them to have something to really care about and something they enjoy and look forward to on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, whatever it is, where you get to sit down and escape.

The audience likes to be taken on new journeys.

Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge.

Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.