Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended.

I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

A lot of the times I'm looking at something that I discover is part of a larger framework and not just a couple jokes. I see that it's a set, a story that I'll be telling. Sometimes I get lost in that.

One of the ways that we cope with anxiety is by over planning and over controlling. If we know where it's going to, we can just relax and do it. Unfortunately, in my experience, that's not the way it works. The story doesn't want to be told what to do. You have to enter into this process with a high level of trust that the many hours of choosing that you're doing every day will gradually clarify the narrative for you. And that's what happens.

The form is always integral to the expression of the theme or to the sheer telling of the story, and sometimes the right form is apparent to me from the outset and sometimes it isn't.

Very quickly I realized that directing is a combination of things: It's visual, it's directing the actors, it's telling a story. And people don't always mention this part of directing, but it's also knowing how to really edit something into something that makes sense.

My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved.

A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.

You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn-that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you're a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale.

According to Chekhov," Tamaru said, rising from his chair, "once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired." "Meaning what?" "Meaning, don't bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away with all useless ornamentation.

Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others.

When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Because I come from the theater, I use the images of the theater and of movies a great deal when I write. I see the story in my head. I have to break down the outline of a story first. I have to know where I'm going. Usually I have a good beginning and a good ending, and then I think, "Now I have to find my way through it."

Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.

I don't start a story until I know where it's going to end.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.

I'm a plotter. A thinker, a note-maker, a mapper and a flow-charter. I'm up for using any device that will teach me more about the people I'm writing about and their story.

I never start with the story first, which is maybe obvious, because the narrative line of my films is really not that strong or dramatic. They're very simple.

I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.

Call on literary convention, and it will gladly tell your story for you.

I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.