Steven Knight Quotes

My father was a TV scriptwriter. He would perform his dialogue out loud, while my mum transcribed it at the typewriter. So I grew up thinking that plucking characters out of the air was an extremely normal way to behave.

The stories I work on, especially for any length of time, do tend to become personal to me.

I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away. That's why I tend to work with the same people; I really befriend them.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences. He worked with Welles, you know, and he's a marvelous man.

If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.

Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.

How I work is I work from of very character-driven place. And I trust the writers.

One of the greatest things about 'Continuum' is how great the writing is; our writing room is one of the most talented ones I've ever had. It really helps me as far as character development because they paint a very descriptive picture of who the characters are while still letting us have freedom to put in our own ideas.

I used to live with J.D. Souther, and I would watch him write. He's be sitting, he'd say something, and then he'd write it down. That's craft.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in.

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

I wasn't trained as a writer-director. And the projects I write are difficult to finish.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

I have to always remember, writing is really hard.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.

I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

There is always going to be a little bit of me in each character.

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.