Jurnee Smollett Quotes

In TV writing, I felt like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There's so much more freedom in fiction writing.

For myself, I feel more natural writing stories or novels than writing plays. I feel more like myself, like I can express myself better, and like I have a greater clarity about what I want to do.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I think theatre to some extent is always about telling stories, isn't it, and I think what I've learned is that freedom comes when you tell your story; freedom comes when you tell the truth.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

I don't have a style. I just try to write what the story demands.

I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, 'Are these people real to me?'

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

I'd play the same character for ten years if the words and the moments that I'm playing are authentic.

It's people politics, people dynamics that make a show really good, whether it's 'Desperate Housewives' or 'Lost' or 'The Sopranos.' It's the people we've grown to love or otherwise.

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 love to write. I used to be a math teacher. And I like the idea that other people could write about the same subjects, but no one would write it just the way I do. It's very individual: a child could write the same story as somebody else, but it wouldn't come out the same.

Something that bothered people about 'Dawson's Creek' but as a writer, I kind of dug: writing those kids as though they were college grad students. It was fun and liberating and made for a true sort of writer's show. It was a fun year for me, because I got to get out of debt with my first TV job, and I learned a ton.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

I feel it's very important to let individual writers' voices come through. But the character has to be consistent.

As an actress I feel that if you start to impose your own inhibitions, then you are not doing your job.

I feel for Veronica Mars so much when I'm watching at home. It is a wonderful story. The writing is consistently funny, biting, charming, heart-wrenching, etc. I also like the look of it. The cinematography - different from any other show.

In my acting, I have tried to do this - to present to audiences a living creature in whom they can recognise themselves or someone they know.

Usually, people write the characters into a box, and that's just not true to life.

If you want to write serious books, you must be ready to break the forms, break the forms.

Acting is fun and I refuse to get involved in the semantics and the politics of strategy and breaking out of something or doing something because you need to do something else. For me it's all about what fuels my soul and if I'm passionate about a screenplay then that's what I'll do next.

My writing, it's mostly fiction, but I want it to feel intimate and real.

If I'm going to direct a horror movie, I'd have to be the one writing it, because I have to make it personal.

When you work at a magazine, you have to tell the truth. When you're not working in that format, it's fun to see where your mind takes you when the dictates have nothing to do with anyone but yourself.

Whenever I started writing music, it just naturally led itself there. As I started to tell my story, it's where my home was. It's just a very natural choice.