Mike Colter Quotes

For me, the worst writing generally just 'flips' things: this person's really a traitor; it was all a dream; etc. Nothing is so ruinous as a forced 'twist,' I think.

On TV, you never know where it's going. They may even lie to you about where it's going. You never really know because the scripts come in every couple of weeks or so.

I've said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense.

'Homeland' does have that ability to tear the rug out from under you.

When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens.

I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader.

On an island, anything can happen. In a crime novel, it usually does.

On a TV show, you don't know where the character is going.

I like the idea of shows where I don't know where I'll be at the end of the season.

And I love the twist. I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, and on the very last page, quite often - very last paragraph sometimes - I like to just play with your perception one more time in a way that makes everything that came before just a little bit different.

That's what a good crime novelist - any good novelist - should do with you: play with your perceptions while showing you everything in plain sight.

It's a good thing about George R.R. Martin: He's prepared to kill off the main guys. You don't get the feeling that the good guy is going to last forever, like James Bond.

When people start to think they're figuring out 'The Vampire Diaries,' it switches on you.

If we can continue to tell stories where fans don't know what will happen next, I think that will be a plus in this 'Divas Revolution.'

What resonates with me whenever I watch a great movie or TV show is the balance of inevitability and unpredictability. And it's a very delicate balance.

Very often, I'm part of the deception because the way I play things is that I want you to be able to look back and go, "Oh, my god, I didn't see that at the time, but now it all makes sense," and you want to watch it a second time with the benefit of hindsight.

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. There are many things to think of. There is much story.

You don’t know what’s going to happen in the end, and that’s what the best plays are.

We'll have a part and it's clearing up, so you think something is going to happen and it totally stops and does something completely different and then the part you thought was going to happen comes out of completely nowhere.

When I read the scripts, I'm always so excited to see what's going to happen because it's unpredictable.

I always thought the joy of reading a book is not knowing what happens next. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)

Part of me was fascinated by the idea that I would only get next week's episode a week in advance and wouldn't actually know where I was going with it, until the script landed on my mat. But, part of me wanted to know what was going to happen.

I love to go into a movie and have no idea what's going to happen in it.

Things never pass where you think, nor along the paths you think