Andrew Haigh Quotes

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

I'll tell you what I really enjoy. We all go to the movies, we all watch television, we know what they're about, how they work. When the main character is a cop or a spy, it's very exciting, but I also very much enjoy when the main characters are nobodies - a trucker.

I want to keep telling stories of ordinary people.

Once, a French journalist told me that all my films are the same. I said, 'Excuse me? I work hard to make them different.' What she meant was that in my films there is a character that faces insurmountable odds, and they overcome them. But I thought that might be true, but you need certain factors for drama, and you need to overcome them.

As a storyteller, I think where working in television can almost be like lifting weights - you really have to know what your story is about.

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences - is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

All you need to know about plotting is twofold. 1. Give your characters goals. 2. Don't let them reach those goals.

have a much harder time writing stories than novels. I need the expansiveness of a novel and the propulsive energy it provides. When I think about scene - and when I teach scene writing - I'm thinking about questions. What questions are raised by a scene? What questions are answered? What questions persist from scene to scene to scene?

You can't rely on the acting to tell the story.

All of the good movies are based on how that story was told. And you cannot do it with a bad script, that's for sure, no matter who.

I did a lot of this through writing flashbacks. Many of the flashbacks took place at Cal's school and I eventually cut them because they didn't seem essential and they slowed the pace of the story in the first third of the book. They were essential to me, though, in that I learned about my characters.

If I really knew how to do good storytelling, I would be a writer. Mystery is not a huge part of it. ... It's tension, it's relationships. I think it's a struggle.

The story is everything, so it always begins with a story.And research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.

Good storytelling is harder than it sounds, but the easy part is that everyone has the ability to do it. ...Tap into it.

I love magic and playing with magic systems. But to me, good fantasy like all fiction comes down to good character and plotting.

The story is the only thing that's important. Everything else will take care of itself. It's like what bowlers say. You hear writers talk about character or theme or mood or mode or tense or person. But bowlers say, if you make the spares, the strikes will take care of themselves. If you can tell a story, everything else becomes possible. But without story, nothing is possible, because nobody wants to hear about your sensitive characters if there's nothing happening in the story. And the same is true with mood. Story is the only thing that's important.

I'd love to get a chance to talk shop with Joss Whedon. That's pretty high up there on the list.

I think the way you become a good storyteller is to read a lot of stories and evaluate them in your own mind.

I'm a narrative-minded actor. I'm thinking of the story. I'm not worried about whether the camera is on the right side of my face, or where the camera is. I'm just going for the story.

I have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest of the story. Technique can't operate at all, of course, except on believable material.

Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.

But if you don't understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.

I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story.

I lack the skill to hold a story line for the length required for a novel or even a short story. I have never had an idea that could withstand a hundred thousand words, or even ten thousand words of rubber meeting the road.

And if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that cool props and special effects are not enough. Story comes first. Everything depends on story.