Scott Porter Quotes

I go to great lengths to make certain situations feel right to the reader.

Some of my favorite shows are ones where the characters are vile and human and flawed. That's what makes me want to keep watching a show, not writers telling me how to feel about characters.

We're not one thing, as human beings, so any character that is written uni-dimensional, that's just a shallow character with shallow writing and shallow acting.

The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.

In writing, I search for believability, simplicity and emotional impact.

You can be moved by an animated film and not by a live action film. There could be great inspiration in and humanity in that animated story.

I'd rather let the fiction speak for itself and I don't want to write fiction that tells people how to feel, and I don't want to be judgmental in the fiction.

It's the only way I really know how to tell the story is to be able to kind of live through the characters. So when I find something that resonates with me, it's usually because it cuts to something very real inside of me; something that I've gone through or experienced.

In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.

I learned a great lesson early on, even before I was really an actor, from that movie 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' that John Hughes made: that you could make a movie that's really, really, really, really funny, and sometimes you can still achieve... making the audience feel very deep emotions as well.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

I don't really approach stories to make them different from other stuff I've seen, I just try to get into the character, into his or her head. Try to make it as funny, as scary or as wild as I can so that I really like it.

I look at scripts really for whether they can be moving or penetrate some kind of truth. You are constantly chasing that feeling as an actor when every part of a production comes together.

The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.

The key is a good story. If you have a good story, you have enough emotional beats that you can hit.

I think when see you a character on the screen who is actually being touched by the world, and the stuff is actually landing on him, it makes you empathize.

The early seasons of 'The Simpsons' had a great deal of heart. That's what I'm trying to pull from, the kind of stuff that goes straight to kids' hearts. When they're watching, they don't necessarily know why they love something.

The great thing about Pete and Peggy's storyline is that you barely have to do anything. There's so much there, so much history, that you can have them exchange a look and it's so loaded. So you honestly don't have to do anything.

I'd say Rob Reiner's 'When Harry Met Sally' is my all-time favorite. It made me realize there's a way of telling a story where the audience is so in love with the characters that they forget you're even telling a story.

Don't forget there are two sides to performing. Finding the truth, but you also have to be transparent enough for the audience to see it. How many times have you seen a performance and thought: 'Well, it seems to be meaning a great deal to you but it ain't coming across to me?' It is to be shared.

The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.

I try to play real people who inspire me through something in their journey.

Great art, the more specific you are, the more universal it becomes, and that's the thing that I loved about 'The Wire.'

I purposely adopted a style in my storytelling wherein I don't have to explain everything or why the story is moving in a particular way.