Chris Zylka Quotes

The script is really always the main attraction, and then there's whether there is an interesting character and great people around you. Those are the key elements that I look for.

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

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

Whatever character you're playing you have to complete the entire interior infrastructure, whatever it is - but what gets divulged or what people completely understand depends on the script and what you decide to show. But you have to know it.

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. - from the introduction of the 1986 Norton edition

Marvel has this tradition, and I think that Sony has this tradition too, of hiring directors for Spider-Man who are dramatic directors. That are directors who are interested in human beings, in characters, in drama, and who are really good with actors. That kind of feels like a Spider-Man director to me. And because Spider-Man is always as big as the films that are being made at Marvel, it always is character and story. You can never take that out.

The inspiration really comes first from the character and the story. That vision of what the story is, and what the character is, the world that they inhabit and what the story wants to tell. That's really what inspires me.

The story is the only thing that's important. Everything else will take care of itself. It's like what bowlers say. You hear writers talk about character or theme or mood or mode or tense or person. But bowlers say, if you make the spares, the strikes will take care of themselves. If you can tell a story, everything else becomes possible. But without story, nothing is possible, because nobody wants to hear about your sensitive characters if there's nothing happening in the story. And the same is true with mood. Story is the only thing that's important.

Directing made me realise what I do as an actor that's extraneous, it focuses your mind on story, story, story.

When people are deeply affected by the Word, they tell it to other people.

I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.

I guess it's easier to get things made when you know the story you want to tell, you know the characters you want to play, and you know the filmmakers you want to tell them with.

I find it so important now to be a role model and a figure. And I know that may sound strange to some people, but most important is my connection with my fans and the connection that they breed with one another.

But if you don't understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.

The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.

You kind of worry for the characters in a way that you don't normally in sci-fi, because sci-fi tends to be about the ideas, and this is about people.

We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.

Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

To be honest, I don't think of any of my characters as minor characters - they're all the main characters in a story that I don't necessarily get to tell.

The thing I always guard against when I'm talking to people I'm working with about a script is that there's a thing I don't like and it's called "talk story." It's when you're talking about the story; the characters are tasked with talking about the story instead of allowing the audience to experience the story.

I look for really great characters. I say great because as long as they're really good, there's something you can do. And really good storytelling. And when people ask me what the story is, I say it's really several stories really. They're intermeshed.

Respect your characters, even the ­minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's.

I felt so much when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I felt everything. I didn't understand [myself], I was so happy yet so angry and sad. That was the point when I realized that I needed to tell stories and make characters come alive and I needed to make people cry, and make people angry, and make people happy, and make them laugh.

I really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and those characters live their lives.

The biggest thing I've noticed with some of my favorite directors is their gift of sticking a bunch of strangers in a room together and making them comfortable and making them into a cohesive group. There's magic involved, because you don't know why anybody would pick this group of people.