Alan Tudyk Quotes

I'm always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.

I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable.

A novel ensures that we can look before and after, take action at whatever pace we choose, read again and again, skip and go back. The story in a book is humble and serviceable, available, friendly, is not switched on and off but taken up and put down, lasts a lifetime.

Science fiction writers aren't short of ideas. You can read a book, and it sets off a chain of thought processes, so it becomes a response to other people's books.

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

I do take this insane pleasure in world-building. I get the world in my head, but I have to make sure everyone else gets it.

I feel like the books were just written like a movie. You read it and you can just kind of see everything. Before I went in to read with the director, I read the first book and I loved it. I didn't realize how good the writing was. And then I went in and read with Gary Ross, and that was it.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

There are times my stories become - what I feel - not only accessible to hearing me on television, but they make wonderful reading.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

When you read a book, you are letting another person distract your thoughts and work your emotions. If they are adept, there's nothing better than turning off and getting lost.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

I'd probably play games obsessively if I didn't write, although I admit I don't read novels partly because I don't enjoy it, not just because it's the wrong side of the creator-consumer barrier for me. I'm a visual writer. I think in moving 3D images and write down what I observe.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

I find that short stories are almost like palate cleansers or brain cleansers.

When we read a book, we have a blurry image that's kind of physical but blurry. But we have an emotional image also. We have an emotional connection to the character.

I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut.

Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don't have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.

An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play.

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author's world.