Bob Greene Quotes

When I think about the new film, I think I can do whatever I want with fiction, but the more documentary it is, the better it will be because that's what I'm good at. I'm good at observing people's behavior and putting these unspoken things into movie contexts in ways that other people can sometimes miss.

I have found that the characters in my novels stay with me after a book has ended. I know them in some sense. I never map anything out. I just think until I am secure in the voice of one of them, and then let the character unfold.

I am a director and I think actually they're not that different - dramas and docs aren't that different. When I'm doing a drama I'm trying to make things feel as believable and real as possible. The hair, the make-up, the costume, the design, you're trying to make it authentic. And when you've got a documentary it's all authentic, so what story are you going to tell and how do you make it dramatic and exciting? It's the same thing.

It's once I discover the people inside that the story really gets going, and then the formal invention becomes less important. It's just the way in; it's the door; and then what's behind it is always some kind of people, which I think probably makes me more in the tradition of realistic fiction because that's usually what I'm interested in, the people.

I've been falsely accused of drawing too much from real life. But I am a petty thief - I take little things. And, I mean, I can hardly write 10 words before I start to make things up. I start to invent, because that's what I want to do. I'm running away to an invented place.

With fiction, you can take something that bothers you, or that you don't have in clear focus, and you can put it under as much stress as you want. Really get underneath the skin. With nonfiction, you're restricted to what happened.

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

I'm a fiction writer, and fiction is telling the lives of unreal people. But the only way you can learn to do that well is by really understanding the lives of real people.

Honestly, I don't try to guess at what most people want. I don't think I'd guess right, and I just think that that's not a good recipe for storytelling. I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like.

I'm one of the narrative-push people. I don't outline, I don't plan ahead. So I'm my first reader, telling myself the story as I'm going along. Since I haven't designed it ahead of time, each day I have to be sure that the footing is solid before I make the next step. I think you could be more intricate if you work it out ahead of time.

I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

If you’re too rigid in your thinking you may miss some wonderful opportunities for storytelling.

Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.

I don't think writers change the past any more than other people do, except in so far as we may mine our lives and change things for fictional use.

I just think we live in a world where people are so excited about the hot new thing, but you can't necessarily tell a story in one movie. With this platform, we can really dive deep and go for it.

There are vast differences between scripts and stories, of course. Few fiction writers would want to give up the opportunity to explore how the minds of their characters work, or to set aside the opportunity to provide necessary background exposition in a succinct fashion.

Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.

fiction is founded on truth....unless things did happen,people couldn't think of them.

Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

It's a great wake-up call for our entire industry: What movies are we making? What storytellers are we allowing to tell the stories? What people are we allowing to be cast in those stories? I think we need newer stories, and more people given the opportunity to do anything they want.

I like the discipline of writing a script. You can't go into the character's head - you have to find these creative ways to help externalize what they're thinking.

I think the hardest part of writing anything is getting exposition out easily, without hitting people over the head with it.

Whatever field you can do that, that's where you want to do it, and I think that's why people like David Fincher and Ridley Scott are interested in it, too, because when you sit down on a meeting in HBO and they're like, "More, more." You're just like, "Oh yeah, I love this." Sometimes it's a little harder in film. I think also it's a great audience, take advantage of it. It's a great audience.

I love to just listen and watch. I could happily watch a security camera at a store. Often during a day I'll see a guy selling pretzels or an argument that somebody's having on a stoop and I'll think, "Oh I wish I had my camera, I wish I could capture this moment." There's something about people being people and interacting that can be so beautiful when it's framed by a camera. That desire to capture people as they are, and the stubbornness to keep going when they don't necessarily want you to capture them being who they are, are key.