M. Night Shyamalan Quotes

I think people hire me for the slightly weird angle that I bring. Part of the trick is keeping it sort of simple; you have to give the impression of not that much music playing when there's really a lot.

I come at it from a different angle of attack with each novel, searching for the technological texture the story demands. There isn't a recipe; it's more of an instinct.

I think every filmmaker has his way of working, and I respect that.

At the end of the day everyone has his own style of making a film and add the kind of ingredients which he feels would be good enough to entice audiences.

I think every director has a different methodology.

The only thing that's changed for me is that I've figured out a new way to do this; when I go to record, I like to do the drums last, if that makes any sense to you.

I'm all about working with directors that are doing different techniques and I think everyone has their way of getting it to the place that they think is best.

You know when I shoot with digital capture, I look for the mistake. When I shoot with film I embrace it.

Most of the films I myself like don't do very well. Every director, he has a choice, whether to go for subtlety and try to articulate every minute detail, or to go for the broad strokes and hope that the people will fill in between the lines. I tend to go for the broader strokes.

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last. Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.

I don't start with an idea or concept in the sense that I flesh out an idea or concept and set it at the center of something.

I've never invested myself properly in trying to write stories. When I write lyrics, mostly I write each sentence separately on an index card and then I lay them out and I just mix them up.

I believe the approach of the artist and the approach of the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the affirmation of life.

I don't take notes; I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing. I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. You can't sell it as caviar.

I always love it best when you have a project where there is this commingling of the subject matter and the way in which you're recording that subject matter.

I actually pay careful attention to that sort of thing - infusing humor into my films - because that's how important I think humor is.

I'm not a method actor. I can't even explain so much what I do.

I'm not one of those actors who sits around the table and intellectualizing anything, or discusses much of anything. Everything for me is intuitive and instinctive.

My springboard is always the script. Even if the script is taken from a novel, I often haven't read the novel...

I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions... Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.

Those titles, Executive Producer or actor, are unimportant. I always try to approach my role as an artist. The first thing you want to do, that you attempt to do as an artist, is to have some sort of input into the material that you are working on. That is how my process begins; I say to myself: "I want to do this kind of work or I want to do that kind of work."

I do believe in [Robert] Bresson's method of creation through omission, not through addition.

Everything in The Room, we did it the same way the big studios do it. The only difference is the budget and the actors. We put an ad in Back Stage West and in return we got almost 8,000 headshots from people who wanted to be in the film. We then do a process of selection and a rehearsal process after they are selected. The process of audition is very time consuming.

How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it

I think if you had different artists approaching the material in different styles, that's very different. I think it's an interesting thing to discover, what's present in the work even when you're shifting the styles. I've just found it a much stronger way to work.