Lawrence O'Donnell Quotes

When I sit down to write, I don't think, 'OK, what is the next David O. Russell film I can write, or what is Harvey Weinstein going to want to buy?' Or even, 'What are filmgoers going to want.' I try to think, tell a good story. Just do what you do.

TV is a writer's medium.

I'm very involved in the writing on every level.

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.

I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.

I'll tell you what I miss most. What I would love to do, more than anything, is just anthologies. With an anthology you can tell any story and be in every division of television. We don't have any anthologies anymore, do we?

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.

Every day, I learn something new. I think one of the most exciting things for a writer is to work on a TV show. It's like a novel. You have a really long time to develop and learn about the characters, and you can just really keep digging in deeper, every week.

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

Creatively, it's great, because when you write your own movies, you get to create whatever you want.

In an ideal world, I'd love to work on something that is on par with 'Lost' or better than 'Lost.'

'The Names' is planned as a nine-part series. I have a kind of road map: I know the final scene of episode nine. But as to exactly how we get there, what detours or horrible accidents we might have to pass through, I like to keep that a little fluid.

Literature invents its own rules.

The things that I'm interested in directing are fiction, because then you're not married to a particular reality.

In TV, it's so much more about the writers because they're the ones creating the universe. The writers are the ones who know what's up.

With screenplays and teleplays, they are mapped, really, in the blueprint of a finished product, which is something you're going to watch on a screen. But a book is an end to itself, really.

If you can write and create original characters, do your own show, develop your own material, it gives you more power than just waiting around to be hired.

As much as I really like the screenwriting thing, the novel is where the author has so much control.

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

I'm especially keen to work with good scriptwriters on stories we have developed.

I suppose I'm pulled towards fiction because I really like the freedom it gives me.

I want to do film and TV. I want to make good stories. I want to write; I want to be more involved.

I tried to write a TV series, and then I discovered first of all that I love writing more than anything on this earth, and that you could write exactly as well as you want to.

I sort of love reading the scripts and going, 'Oh wow, what a great idea. I never would have thought of that.'

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.