Douglas Booth Quotes

But actors at a certain point take the best of what's available to them.

I'm looking for challenges, and as always, what matters is the script, the character and the director.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.

I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.

All writers I know are readers first and foremost, and that's why you become a writer.

I knew that if I was going to write a book, I was going to have to read one, too.

I was quite a reader before I became a writer.

I probably read 100 times more than I write, but that way when I move my characters through it, I know.

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing.

For the best part of my childhood I visited the local library three or four times a week, hunching in the stacks on a foam rubber stool and devouring children's fiction, classics, salacious thrillers, horror and sci-fi, books about cinema and origami and natural history, to the point where my parents encouraged me to read a little less.

I don't speculate too much about the future. That's the thing about this job - it's so fickle. You take the jobs, you read the scripts and, if something interests you and you like the people who are working on it, you go for it.

I don't really look for a script and go, 'I need to do a thriller, so I'm going to do this.' I just read scripts and look for the best possible story.

When I choose projects, I don't stipulate between film or theatre or television. I receive scripts and I read scripts - and when I read a script that's good, I then get married to it and talk to my agent about what happens next.

Well, I think certain roles are chosen for us. The moment I read Pete Campbell I thought: I can do this, this is mine. And in Money, too. The truth is I turn down a lot of projects. If a character doesn't have some kind of internal struggle, it's no good for me.

For most of my life - well, maybe half of my life, but basically until I was in my mid-20s - I wrote stories. From the time I was 5 or 6 until I was 25. And I read a lot of stories during that time.

I keep an open mind when a script is narrated to me.

What more can an actor ask for than being surrounded by scripts to choose from?

Finding one good script is a huge challenge. So I do a film whose script comes and grabs me. Once I finish that, I look forward to the next movie.

The three things that help writing the most are living, writing, and reading. In that order.

I read my Eyes out, and cant read half enough neither. The more one reads the more one sees We have to read.

The most important thing for a writer to do is to write. It really doesn't matter what you write as long as you are able to write fluidly, very quickly, very effortlessly. It needs to become not second nature but really first nature to you. And read; you need to read and you need to read excellent books and then some bad books. Not as many bad books, but some bad books, so that you can see what both look like and why both are what they are.

Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.

Sometimes the story takes you to places that you want to go and sometimes it takes you places you don't want to go.

Writing is a job, a craft, and you learn it by trying to write every day and by facing the page with humility and gall. And you have to love to read books, all kinds of books, good books. You are not looking for anything in particular; you are just letting stuff seep in.

I don't believe in holy writ. Buy fifty books or twenty-five books, take three weeks off, read them and make up your own theory. The fact that you end up literally burning twenty-two out of twenty-five books is beside the point.