Jess Walter Quotes

I tend to be drawn more to people than pure story ideas.

I think I have learned to really get out of the mathematical side of myself that looks at story and story structure and go with, "Okay, well, what would people do in real life?"

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages, sometimes I write them in a column, sometimes in a novel, sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself, 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'

I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

I think American films right now are suffering from an excess of scale. Lots of movies we're seeing now are more akin to video games than stories about human life and relationships. Twelve- to 20-year-olds are maybe the largest economic force in the US movie business. I'm not a very nostalgic person - but I enjoy a good story.

I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against.

I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.

There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it.

I think that it drives from an emotional connection with everybody that pulls you through all of those events, whether it's the events or what would be more the action, or I guess the visual effects side of it. So it always starts with me from - emotionally - 'Why do you care about the people who are going through what they're going through?' Because it takes a hell of a lot to put them through that. So you better care for them when they're doing it.

I think Aaron [Sorkin] did a remarkable job of plucking Andy [Hertzfeld] out of [Steve] Jobs' story, to perhaps reflect back on Steve a sense of maybe some things that were missing in Steve's life. Andy, just by nature, is one of these straight shooters.

It's rather useless to write a gripping narrative with nothing in it but climate change because novels are always about people even if they purport to be about rabbits or robots.

I have always liked family-type dramas; I just think the dynamics in families make for some really interesting characters.

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.

I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

I'll often dream about characters before I start writing their stories.

You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone. It has to be the story and the characters.

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.

I've discovered I can't make a film about people I dislike.

Readers embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

I always prefer to write songs about emotional situations and heartbreak because I like getting into the character.