Steven Knight Quotes

I think that limitations are the most important part of any art form

There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on, this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't.

I think that three-act fundamentalism in film culture is a problem sometimes, because it's almost too obvious, or it's too expected. And it's not the only way to fill two hours, or to phrase things, or to order thoughts, or order ideas.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.

When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.

Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control.

In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them.

The best thing that can happen to people entering creative professions is the dwindling of all other possibilities.

I suppose the worst case scenario is that people will get to the point where they can't actually afford to make what they want to make creatively. The industry is collapsing.

I adore doing classic adaptations, but I also feel their frustrations and their limitations.

Film is abstract, not definite. It is a dream.

We're offered bigger, larger budget movies to produce a lot, and we don't do them. That's not to say there aren't exceptions: there are a few exceptions, but I try and stick by the rules that produce what I think is the highest quality, most innovative work and try and let the rules go that make us feel like we're retreading.

It didn't take very long for me to feel like the country radio box was a little too small. So that's what 'Don't Fence Me In' was all about.

Cinema is a creative medium. The director has the right to express.

I have my own ideas when it comes to making cinema. My films should be of my liking and suit my convictions.

Expectations are kind of lethal for art, I think.

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship - it's totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws.

You don't want to move toward some utopian literary situation where everybody's free of all conventions. That's ridiculous! Conventions are what you need. You have nothing to break down if you don't have conventions.

Art flouts convention. Convention became convention because it works.

Katie Grand often comes in from a very different angle than what I've been thinking about. And that really gives it that extra something, because designers can often get stuck in their own view of how the collection can look. I always love the way that she turns it into something else and I kind of let go at that point.

All artists are anarchists in some way - some more extreme than others, but it's something that I think artists are supposed to do. We're supposed to present a different angle on everything, and I certainly think it is [art] as much as poetry, in my opinion.

I don't think I've succeeded in making any really good films. There are moments, scenes, whole movements that sing. It has all added up to a cinema of sorts, even though I'm still learning my art.

An awful lot of filmmaking and playmaking is taken over by marketers and publicists, who set about to tell people what to think. And people feel safer that way. But it's not safe, and the whole wonderful thing that cinema and filmmakers can contribute is to go into the not-safe land of real life.

I do think it's important that we experiment with new vocabularies. That new words help us conceptualize our social existence in a different way.