Patrick Wang Quotes

The only thing approaching art in a movie is the script.

The script for 'Trainspotting' was amazing, and it was different from the book.

I don't like the word rock opera, but I'm trying to write on that level that's reserved for plays still, or novels.

We are all affected by the time we are born into, and of course that feeds into your work. Society is based on storytelling - religious myths, opera, film - and 1968 was always seen as a time of rupture and fragmentation. I have always been interested in those words.

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written.

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.

Comic-strip artists generally have very modest ambitions. Day to day, we labor to fit together all these little moving parts - a character or two, a few lines of dialogue, framing, pacing, payoff - but we certainly don't think of them adding up over time to some larger portrait of our times.

I like films to be complete in their written form.

If you only do issue-based drama, you can become a boring wanker.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

Film is very condensed.

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

I didn't write 'Snow White' for any class, but I got bitten by the screenwriting bug and wrote a couple of scripts in my spare time instead of going to keg parties or something.

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull.

I always did go against the singer-songwriter form. I think I've always had a lot of storytelling songs.

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

Now I can't wait to write my next play.

Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.

I'm all for whatever transitions the book properly to a movie.

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.

I don't assume, because I can write screenplays, that I know how to write a novel. It's a very different world. There's a craft involved in storytelling, and it's a different kind of craft. But yes, someday I will do that. It just might be awhile.

Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned artifice.