Richard K. Morgan Quotes

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

I love good film, whether it's an independent or studio film. The independent films, I think the good ones aren't necessarily eccentric ones but they're the more specific ones.

There's no mistaking the fact that some of the best longform fiction out there now is in American television. 'The Wire' and 'Deadwood' and 'The Sopranos.'

I know that movies are basically meant to be entertainment, but I'm not that interested in entertainment.

I think 'Westworld' and 'Hap and Leonard' are two of the greatest things that you can do with this oversized pool of the television medium.

A film should always at least be about something.

The best TV that I watch, I always feel safe when I'm watching it. And that could be like 'Homeland' or 'The Americans'; by 'safety,' I mean the show knows its parameters.

'Twin Peaks' is like a movie; 'China Beach' is like a movie. These are two of the most cinematic shows on television, and they belong together.

I'm not very particular about the commercial angle in my films, but entertainment is very important.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

It's a risk, but I'm sort of ready to let go of thinking of movies as books that you can watch. The notion of, 'If I put the narrative blocks in the right order, this will solve all of my storytelling problems.' No, it won't, and you end up with little more than books on film.

A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.

There are very few films that work like a novel.

One of the things I've been most excited by is U.S. television drama. For my money, it's some of the greatest narrative art of our time. Each series is like a 19th-century Russian novel: you need to do a lot of work in the first few episodes, just as you do in the first 50-60 pages of those books.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

A film engages you emotionally and intellectually.

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.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

It's amazing what you can do without in terms of filmmaking when a story is really important.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

For me, with me, making a film is always about humanity.

The big influence on me was Robert Altman, who, especially in 'Nashville,' transformed my sense of dramatic structure and showed how you could handle overlapping stories.

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