Josh Lucas Quotes

I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing fiction.

There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.

I find inspiration in many places. Sometimes music gives me the kernel of a story. Sometimes it's dissatisfaction with the plot of a movie or a book that gets me thinking. Sometimes it's love of a movie or book.

I love the idea of real-life experiences finding their way into fiction. I think that's really cool.

It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.

The multilevel, the conscious and the unconscious, is natural when I write scripts, when I come up with ideas and stories.

First, I would find an object which I would think is suitable for my characters and stories, then write about it, and in the end, I ended up with a house full of thousands of objects.

I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut.

Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don't have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

Something about your life always makes its way into your stories. That's just the nature of the beast.

People have asked me a lot, 'What comes first? The pictures or the story? The story or the picture?' It's hard to describe because often they seem to come at the same time. I'm seeing images while I'm thinking of the story.

It's funny, because what happens to me when I read a script, when something grabs hold of me, I start getting these flashes of people or places or things or images.

In the case of the 'Saint' movie, I did do some research. I visited a few shelters. But usually, my stuff just comes out. I don't have any control over that.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

Where story comes from, I don't know. I know that I become obsessed with something. An idea, an image, a person, the way a person talks. And then something starts happening that I can't explain, and it has a lot to do with language.

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.

The script for what would eventually become my first graphic novel, 'Cairo,' sort of came to me in kind of a bolt of lightning within 24 hours of having moved to that city. Just a jumble of characters and narratives and interesting things that I was seeing and experiencing for the first time.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them frequently.

For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

A novel is achieved with hard work, the short story with inspiration.

I think I came to film-making through writing. I started to write, and people, teachers, responded to my writing.

Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.