Les Moonves Quotes

If you create a good story that has a lot of story value... I think audiences like that. It's why they stick with the same TV show over and over.

A strong story can move me to tears, and it doesn't matter whether it's a science-fiction or fantasy world. It's about what happens to a person, the choices they make. That's what's interesting.

I usually give a book 40 pages. If it doesn't grab me by then, adios. With young adult books, you can usually tell by Page 4 if it's worth the time. The author establishes the conflict early, sometimes in the first sentence. The themes of hope, family, friendship and overcoming hardship appeal to most everyone.

You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved because the movie is almost always bad when you do that.

Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?

The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.

I don't think people are ever going to a place where they're like, 'I'm over stories about character and love.'

It was a challenge for me to do a plot because I'd been an essayist and a journalist. I had to be vigilant about moving things along and being entertaining.

As long as your storytelling and emotional depth are intact, that's what people will focus on.

I love all genres. The only thing I get stymied by is the Family Drama. I don't necessarily know how to approach that.

Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience.

You've got to think of fun stories, and if the fun story happened to have a lesson, that's a great thing. If you build a movie around a lesson, you're in real trouble.

When you're writing a novel - at least the way I write is I work from what I would call 'emotional atmosphere,' ambiance to ambiance.

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

I write the kind of stuff I'd like to watch.

In a story, you have to have a theme and an angle, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end. You have to have a defining moment and kick it to death. You gotta be able to recognize that, by the way. It probably takes experience.

There is a comfort zone of knowing where things are going and having characters in place, but the action gets more and more dramatic and is very challenging to describe.

It's not easy to tell a story about writers and make that feel like a complete story and an interesting story.

There is nothing new, from Greek mythology to Shakespeare to every romcom ever made, we're just reimagining the same 12 story plots over and over again - so what makes people keep watching and listening? It's all about the character.

For me, emotion comes first. If I have to change a scene, invent a scene, change dialogue, or put Graff by the lake in order to feel that dynamic, and the end results feels like 'Ender's Game,' then hopefully it works.

Once I have a hook I think has potential - enough to spin out more than a hundred thousand words, then I start turning my attention to characters. Who are these people? Why did this thing happen to them? But the hook always comes first.

The trick to making a story matter is that every now and then, somebody you care about has to go. If it's somebody that you don't care about, then it doesn't really have - the stakes aren't there. But if you do that every now and then, then the story matters to people. And there are actual stakes involved, emotional stakes.

In my early 20s, connecting with fiction was a difficult process. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to what was meaningful, what convinced, and what made sense.

I firmly believe that emotions are universal, and I know that when they connect with the audience, it works. There is no such thing as an entertaining or a serious film; there are good films and bad films. Good films will always find a vast audience.

I read a lot of bad scripts and weird television shows. I don't know. There's a lot of work out there I was reading at 14 years old and noticing this lack of thought. And then, reading 'Afterschool,' that's full of thought. It was bursting with ideas.