Noah Hawley Quotes

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.

I love the conflict of relationships on 'Justified.'

I'd like to make character-based dramas. I end up writing thrillers a lot - these psychological character-based things with weird people doing horrible things to each other - coming to a theatre near you!

I think that internal conflict works very well, because, after all, all the best drama is fuelled by conflict.

If significant amounts of time go by without suspenseful action - which is often most powerfully motivated by backstory - the story loses momentum, and readers lose interest.

You can't tell a good story without conflict - the story can't be beautiful or meaningful. We're taught to run from conflict, and it's robbing us of some really good stories.

So, it's a delicate thing, but at the same time our producers and writers are very much aware of the potential downfall that could ensue so I think they're going to be very careful about how they do that. At the same time I don't think they want to leave the characters in the same holding pattern that they've been in for a while. I think that they're all trying to put the characters in a different situation.

If you have no conflict, you have no story. That's number one. That's a rule of novels.

The method in which 'Vadachennai' is narrated gives a feeling as if you are travelling with the characters to the different eras where the various situations happen.

Raaz 3' has a human touch and in fact, horror comes in third place. The first is human touch, while music takes the second place.

'The Chill,' by Jason Starr and Mick Bertilorenzi, was both a wise and nervy choice to start the year: Starr's standalone novels, such as 'Hard Feelings' and 'The Follower,' sustain a mood not unlike the perpetual unscratchable itch on one's back, and go Highsmith-level deep into the sociopathic mind.

Horror is one of the few genres that allows you to explore areas in film that normally you wouldn't otherwise.

I am a huge fan of shows like 'Breaking Bad,' 'Dexter,' 'The Mentalist.'

In thinking about it, the villains often have a little bit more range because their morality is different. You can have just a really good time as an actor, and there is just more there that you can explore on that side of the story.

A lot of actors would tell you that they'd rather play the villain than the hero. When you're the character, there are no repercussions. So there is a kind of liberating feeling about saying certain things to certain people - and I think that it's always quite satisfying to do that.

I want stories where you either hate it or love it. I want to do movies like that, where it's not show and tell, where it's not, 'This is it, and now you reveal the ending, and that's that.'

Broadchurch' was all about shades of grey, both in characters and storytelling, and I wanted to see that through to the end.

Good TV is not about people being happy; it's drama.

I don't like villains who are just villains. People who are just there to be bad - ugh - so annoying.

I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.

You kind of know what kind of reaction a Yorgos Lanthimos movie is going to get.

Francois Truffaut's 'The Soft Skin' starts with a very mundane scene of a family and a man driving to the airport. Yet the music is like a thriller, and you don't understand why. It's not until later that you learn it's because the movie is a thriller.

It's challenging playing grey characters because there's no right way and you get to make your own rules.

The thing that interested me, there are so many filmmakers I admire - like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino - they have these themes where there's not much going on, but they were suspenseful.