David Duchovny Quotes

I remember the guest stars who came, they were always trying to find a new plot for their characters because they wanted to stay. It was really a great working environment.

Actually, I find it great fun to develop family series with lots of characters.

Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.

The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story's going to end and how it's going to go. But on television nobody knows what's going to happen, even the writers.

I feel 'Breaking Bad' - maybe everybody says this about their show - I feel like this show is so special that I don't 'know' that I necessarily really know what it's like to do a regular show.

I'd love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

I mean one of the weird things about TV and one of the things that some actors don't like but I kind of dig is that you never know where you're headed, I mean you never know what the writer might think of next.

TV has gotten perhaps better than your average film script, but at the same time, it's fun to give it all you've got for a few months and produce a story.

I don't know what's coming down the pike in 'Gotham.' Part of me goes, 'Man, I just wish I could be in the writers' room. Do you need someone to make you guys coffee?' I just want to be a part of the flow of it.

In a way, 'Lost,' or maybe TV in general, is a kind of a contract between the writers and the viewers. And the actors - of course we have a great deal to do with it - but where the drama's made, sort of where the meeting of minds is, is between those two parties: writers and audience.

The writers are the backbone in television, like in film, but eventually, as an actress, I can bring something.

Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

The thrill of doing television versus features is, in television, you get to focus more on the characters.

I'm a character-driven director, and I tend to fall in love with the characters in my movies and TV shows.

I like movies. I've written screenplays as a sort of procrastination thing for me. Like I'll work for a couple months on this idea that's been kicking around and then like 30 pages in I'll just go try a novel because it's a lot easier. That's what I know. So why am I killing myself?

I love working on scripts. I love coming up with ideas about what people would dress like or talk like. I love all that.

I guess it's a bit cliché, but as an actor, I really admire good writing. There are a lot of great ideas out there, but it's the execution that really makes it work.

When I sat down with the creators of the show [Longmire], back when we were first starting to do the pilot, Branch was not that interesting on the page. What really sold me on the show and the character was their vision for him. It took the whole first season to flesh him out.

I'm probably more character-driven than plot-driven. It's rare for me to attach myself to an idea for a story.

I would never wish to say that I've finally waved goodbye to any character, it's just that the emphasis tends to shift.

"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.

It starts with the writer-it's a familiar dictum, but somehow it keeps getting forgotten along the way. No film-maker, irrespective of his electronic bag of tricks, can ever afford to forget his commitment to the written word.

For those of us at Marvel Television, it always begins with the story. It's all about the script. It's making sure it's there, on the page. So, we needed to go to a group of individuals who have not only created some of the most memorable animated characters, like Ben 10 and Generator Rex, but also had done two seasons of our very successful Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man series, and that's the Man of Action guys. But, it wasn't just that.

If you're writing a screenplay from scratch, it involves a lot of creation. In this play, I had a strong main character and it involved some creation around him. That's what I like about adapting that particular play because I added some maneuvering space as a scriptwriter to invent my own things.