Maverick Carter Quotes

Be unpredictable, be real, be interesting. Tell a good story.

In a way, there's nothing new under the sun, so anything you write about has been written about by other people. All you can do is bring yourself to it, bring as much honesty as you can to it.

What I don't like is constructing a book that fits in with any kind of generic template, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

Sometimes, I think filmmakers grab too much from real life.

I don't write the same book twice.

You can only write your own vision.

Good content, in any form, works, and what is not good, won't work. It's simple.

After so many years, I don't really think writing has to be absolutely new. No. It has to be good work.

I don't have any writers. I never get a laugh with somebody else's jokes. I can't do it justice.

A baby writer should take inspiration from her predecessors but also find ways to tell her own stories in her own way.

In order to get new things to rap about, you've gotta live.

If you listen to me, it's real stories. It's catchy and something you can relate to.

While choosing shows, I look at stories and the concept, and that has to be different.

With something that's not based just in comedy, you can be a bit weirder in a slightly realistic way.

Don't try to follow in my footsteps. Make your own footsteps! No one else can tell the stories that are inside of you except for you.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.

I think references, where they fit organically, are great. It's great to do a show that's real and relatable, and so much of what is real, is using real things and instances that are specific. Specificity is the best tool you can have, as a writer.

I think it is more important to tell a story rather than follow any trend; that is a less bold way to go. If you do that [follow trends] you are just trying to ride on the coat tails of someone else's success.

I . . . am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever--& of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled.

It's not enough just to be real; you have to try to make it interesting or entertaining.

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.

I feel like there's no real innovation in having some music. It's more just unique personalities and unique expressions, and you being able to tell your story.

Right away, I knew I didn't want to have that look of other guys with long hair and bell-bottom pants, because everybody else had that look. I kind of adopted my boarding-school look, which made me stand out. Then the next thing you know, the first song on my first record is a song called "School Days." It's about going to the boarding school I went to. So then I just started to write about myself. The very first song I ever wrote was about a guy I met in a boatyard that we were working in. So I've always had this thing about sticking to more or less what I knew.

I felt, if I'm going to take on some of the most overdone material, which is men and women and affairs and betrayal of friends, I had better have a new take on it. I think my films come from a desperation not to be boring.