Stephen Tobolowsky Quotes

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

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

I don't want to make movies for kids, and I don't want to make movies for adults either.

I don't want to make a movie till I have an idea I have to make. I don't want to make a movie just to make a movie.

It all comes down to what is best for those particular genres, and if you believe in the stories that you're telling and the characters that you like that you want to tell those stories with, you can pretty much apply it to any genre.

It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.

I just read the script; everything else just follows. Content is the most important thing for me.

I have always believed that facilitating good, unusual content should be one of my prerogatives as someone who has spent half his life in cinema.

Every show I've ever, you know, produced, essentially it's the show I want to watch myself.

If you are opening a play, a play that's really about something, a play that's really about ideas, you have to find a way to sell that play.

I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

I kind of just write what I like to write. I'm thankful that readers of different ages seem to connect to my stories. I don't consciously think about age demographics when I'm working on my comics.

My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.

Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillful, he will flatter them into thinking: 'Why, that's us up there, and aren't we - for all our little foibles - pretty nice guys and gals?'

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.

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.

The real challenge in doing a TV show is in what I would call the maintenance energy. You take that creative energy and you use it every week, of course. But you then need to maintain the quality of the stories, and it's harder to do.

I think the last thing you want to do as a writer, as a storyteller, is to create indifference. I don't necessarily go out of my way to provoke, but I would much rather have a song that triggers a whole myriad of reactions than a song that inspires a shrug of the shoulder.

We don't feel pressure of, 'Let's make this really raunchy.' It's more about making a good story, which is 10 times harder. The raunchy stuff's really easy for us.

I'm a magpie in my fiction, taking whatever looks shiny and curious to line the nest of my story.

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.

At least I want to be making films that are somehow born out of me that are stories I want to tell. The challenge is figuring out how to do it where you can make them personal, yet still deliver to an audience a film experience that is satisfying and emotional, and that's what I'm trying to do.

My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.

You have to make films you feel strongly about. And then hope you can find the audience.