Jess Walter Quotes

I think of 'Liar & Spy' as completely different and actually not at all like a 'When You Reach Me'-type story. I feel like 'Liar & Spy' has a much quieter, more emotional revelation.

Action fiction is driven more by what than by who. Put that ticking nuclear suitcase under Manhattan, and it's relatively easy to create suspense. Literary fiction is driven more by who than by what.

I firmly believe that a story is only as good as the villain.

In 'Breaking Bad,' we have a lead character who definitely finds himself in a situation he would never have expected to find himself in normally.

Literary novelists who have a strong handle on plot are often characterized as good vacation reads because they manage to transport you elsewhere, away from the petty facts of ordinary life.

Let the story lead you. If the story needs to be dark, let it go dark. If it's a sweet, good-for-the-world story, that's what it is.

We need the villain sometimes. It makes for an interesting story.

Well, it's kind of like that classic sort of trajectory in this kind of movie where there's conflict and they're estranged and they kind of grow to love each other but they don't show it. Then at the end - it's kind of like that. But I think the characters are more interesting than that.

I wanted to do something raw and raucous and R-rated. But then 'Middle School: the Worst Years of My Life' came to me. One reason I took this movie on is because I saw it as a really great opportunity to revisit my own past through this character.

I didn't sleep the night I finished 'Sister Hills.' It was so unsettling. I felt really wild. I didn't have a clue. It's a very loaded subject, and I did not know what I had. I was interested in watching how choices unfold over time. It's a story that's raising questions.

Despite the volatile mixture of family, politics and past misdeeds darkening the present, 'Hardball' doesn't have the sharp tang of the early novels or the expansive reach of more recent series installments.

I love movies like 'Girl, Interrupted' and 'Infinitely Polar Bear.' I love action movies.

The way that I work as an actress, I always prefer to read the whole story and tell the whole story and feel what the whole story's going to be, the journey for the audience and how it ebbs and flows, the highs and the lows.

The great thing about the story of 'Twilight', or the story of 'I Am Number Four' is that you get to deal with real issues of identity and what people are going through and the choice of who you're going to be, but it's all large.

Every film is a journey.

I think 'The Condemned' has a great story. It's a lot more than a mindless action flick.

There's a reason a happy ending is called an ending. The trick of a television storyteller is to find all the rivers and mountains and valleys on the way to that ending.

'The Turnaround' isn't even really a crime novel. But you need conflict to make a novel, any kind of novel, and I don't know any other way to do it than crime.

Everyone knows what it's like to make the wrong decision for the right reasons. For me, wrong decisions are the heart of drama - a character who's always making the right decisions is boring.

Broadchurch' has been a life-changing experience for me, but all good stories come to an end.

Badlapur' is a drama, a character-driven story. It is not so much about plot.

Stories work better when not everyone gets what they want.

'Pumped Up Kicks' is written from the perspective like Truman Capote wrote 'In Cold Blood' or Dostoevsky wrote 'Crime & Punishment.' It's psychologically breaking down someone's state of mind and diving in and walking in their shoes.

'Yeh Hai Aashiqui - Siyappa Ishq Ka' has become a part of who I am. I will be narrating the stories, and as a narrator, I get to experience each story up close and personal and go through the same range of emotions as the characters.

I loved writing 'Lost.' It was like a never-ending opera, in a way.