Pete Townshend Quotes

I connect with just plain old everyday people. Human behavior fascinates me, the people who are the nuts and bolts of this country who help hold up the world.

I think I have learned to really get out of the mathematical side of myself that looks at story and story structure and go with, "Okay, well, what would people do in real life?"

We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.

The characters I write about are very internal.

I think if you write about human relationships, you're always exploring the psyche and the soul. I don't separate certain - perhaps more extreme - things that people do from others.

I like doing movies about personal situations; that's what I love about dealing with things. I don't like superhero things, I like real-people things.

If you're going to create a character, the tools you use to make that character 'real' are the lives you see around you. The people you listen to on the street. The emotions you see on faces and bodies while you're sitting... in a Starbucks, watching the world go by.

It's once I discover the people inside that the story really gets going, and then the formal invention becomes less important. It's just the way in; it's the door; and then what's behind it is always some kind of people, which I think probably makes me more in the tradition of realistic fiction because that's usually what I'm interested in, the people.

The truth is that History, with its imposing capital H, is simply the amalgamation of many quotidian lives lived in very ordinary ways. History is always personal. If you read Holocaust survivor or American slavery survivor narratives, you realize all too well that these great Historical moments were personal to someone at some time.

I don't hate people - not remotely other than they make you crazy in traffic, but as I get older I kind of see more and more why people do what they do.

With women, you always have to make an educated decision to figure out what they're thinking. It's not one that's necessarily sympathetic, always. Of course, we're all human beings, but the gender thing is big thing. And a great thing.

I tend to be drawn more to people than pure story ideas.

Jane Austen writes about these humdrum lives with such empathy that they seem endlessly fascinating

I think American films right now are suffering from an excess of scale. Lots of movies we're seeing now are more akin to video games than stories about human life and relationships. Twelve- to 20-year-olds are maybe the largest economic force in the US movie business. I'm not a very nostalgic person - but I enjoy a good story.

If the would-be writer studies people in their everyday lives and discovers how to make his characters in their quieter moods interesting to his readers, he will have learned far more than he can ever learn from the constant presentation of crises.

When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How do winners become winners?

I think if you want to make a good sports movie, you've got to cut down on the sports. You have to make it about people. You can't try to impress people with your knowledge and the X and O's and all the details and the technicalities.

Nothing's really changed for me over the years. I like telling stories about people with problems. I can't really put it much simpler than that. Relationships are interesting to me. Not just between men and women but fathers and sons, brothers and sisters and friends.

I'm more into kind of real stories, psychological movies.

Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.

When you meet someone, treat them as if they were in serious trouble, and you will be right more than half the time.

Novels are . . . an unsurpassed form to understand people.

I often pose questions to myself and want the answers. The questions may be psychological or emotional. Or they may involve botany or [...] physiology. [...] I am very curious about strangers I observe - as in a bus line. I am very attached to finding out answers.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.

I like human comedies - or dramedies. More than anything, I'm interested in people just dealing with everyday things that are difficult, and there is more than enough comedy and drama in that.