John Lee Hancock Quotes

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.

You don't have to have a true story to make a true story movie.

When you play a character that's someone real, when you're playing a true story, it's really great 'cause you're not pretending to make up some silly thing.

You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer . . . Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.

This is an IMAGINARY STORY...aren't they all?

He says every story has at least some truth in it, even if most are made up.

We couldn't get it off the ground as a film, but then we begin to think television, and Lowell pushed it out there and Jim and Nick were anxious to do Hap and Leonard anyway, and I had worked with them before, so it was a perfect story. I love the series. I hope there's a second.

In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.

I don't think I have ever created an entire fiction piece or followed a historical piece and made that into a sermon.

What is truer than truth? Answer: the story.

If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.

The past is just a story we tell ourselves.

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

It's not so much that I enjoy screenwriting, though mostly I do, but the difference is, with adaptations, somebody else has done the hard part - made up a story, provided the characters.

If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The writer who doesn't understand that this is beside the point is not a writer at all.

I think there are a lot of great journalists out there. I don't find much fault in the journalist in general; I think everybody would like to break a good story.

I think the world should be represented on television and for the longest its been limited. Ethnic stories specifically need variety in content period.

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

Storytelling wise, you've gotta take it as far as you can possibly take it with each individual movie. If you're holding out something for a sequel or some cliff-hanger, that's not how I think of a satisfying story.

The best stories are often true...The narrative of human life is most beautiful when told truthfully and without boundaries.

I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.

Stories turn anonymous strangers into people who matter.

If you tell a true story, you can't be wrong.

True stories are always good because they're so odd, and so unlikely.

Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths. As for nonfiction, for history, it may be real, but its truth is slippery, hard to access, with no fixed meaning bolted to it. If history doesn't become story, it dies to everyone except the historian.