Angelina Jolie Quotes

I'm great at telling stories with the kids. I do all my different accents. We make our own stories up all the time, the four of us, me and Hannah and the kids.

I've always enjoyed making up stories, especially when I was bored and just sitting around. It got really serious after the children came along.

Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.

Whenever I have tried to make a character bad, they end up being good in some way.

I think storytelling is all about children. We human beings love to hear stories being told - and it first happens when you're a kid.

I love it when you like a character, and then she does something you don't like, and you hate her for a while - then you love her again. I'd like to see her have unlikable moments that the audience understands and sympathizes with.

In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.

Stories can bring alive the moral universe in a very vivid, useful, engaging way.

I just want to make stories. They don't have to have a moral or a reason. There might be some mild cautionary notes, but they're not moral. They don't impart any Judeo-Christian ethic of any kind.

I had two little daughters - I think they were 7 and 4 at the time - and I said, 'I'll write you a story. What do you want it to be about?' One of them said 'a princess' and the other one said 'a bride.' I said, 'That'll be the title.'

In terms of 'Ray Donovan,' the story is so rich, the actors are so fantastic, the writing is impeccable. And it's such beautiful storytelling with complex characters.

I have three kids, so children's literature is a big part of my life.

I read to my kids every night.

I don't just look at things as an actor. I've also written several films, so I look at it as a storyteller and I know if something worked and should have been in there for the benefit of the story and the benefit of the character.

I was always an actress, even as a little kid, and fantasy, horror, sci-fi stories are really all about playing make believe. I just never grew out of that.

Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.

My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved.

Every character I've had in my act - none of them have a similar creation story. I actually thought up Peanut and designed him in my head. I described him to a woman that was making soft puppets and she drew up some sketches. And the character came to be just because he popped into my head.

When you're writing a story or an actor playing a role, you should never think of your characters as heroes or villains. You have to think of them as people first.

What the writers do, and we hopefully can bring to life, is that they present characters who, on the surface, aren't always heroic and their acts aren't always devoid of selfishness.

The truth of it is, writers do have peculiar relationships with their characters. They are our children in more senses than one. They are born of our imaginations, carry much of ourselves in them, and embody whatever dreams we dream of immortality.

The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest.

As a rule, I don't worry about genre. I just want to tell a good story, with characters that interest me and my readers.

You never want to play too vampiric or generically evil, so you look for emotions or character traits that you can relate to.

For any artistic person who creates imaginary people, the art is like inhabiting the life and mind of a seven-year-old child with imaginary friends and imaginary events and imaginary grace and imaginary tragedy. Within that alternate universe, the characters do have quite a bit of free will. I know it's happening in my mind and my mind alone, but they seem to have their own ability to shape their destinies. So I'm not shooting for anything. If the characters are vulnerable it's simply because they're very human.