Sally Mann Quotes

I write, having seen what's happening already in my head. I see it as a movie, and I'm just writing down what's happening in front of me.

If anybody reads a story in a magazine or book, different pictures compete in their minds.

When I write, it's like watching a movie in my head.

I'm more into describing a scenario and I move around in that scenario.

When I'm writing, I'm creating the story and its character with words. I'm thinking about what the pictures will be like, but I never begin to sketch. The pictures are all in my head.

When you're drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, 'Oh, yeah, that's when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she's getting into the car,' you know?

I can't write a scene unless I've visualized it. Unless I can actually see it, and that's why a lot of reviewers have said my books are very cinematic, because I actually do see them before I write them.

My books come to me in images, and sometimes the image is at the beginning of the book, and sometimes it's simply a flash somewhere in the middle.

Writing a film is like building a brick wall. You have a plan, and you have the blocks. Then, somebody says, 'I think we'll take this stone out of here and put it over there. And while we're at it, let's make this stone red and that stone green.'

A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once.

When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.

For me, one of the hallmarks of a really great book is that I'm seeing it in my head while I'm reading.

When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.

I don't start writing a script until I can see it all in my head, then it's a matter of getting it down in white heat.

For some time it's been my habit to use images when preparing a speech: rather than write it down, I illustrate it.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

I picture my books as movies when I get stuck, and when I'm working on a new idea, the first thing I do is hit theaters to work out pacing and mood.

I'm not an artist. I set the camera up and tell my story.

What's funny about that is when I was writing Twilight just for myself and not thinking of it as a book, I was not thinking about publishing, and yet at the same time I was casting it in my head. Because when I read books, I see them very visually.

'The Indian Runner' was easy. It had been incubating in me for eight years, and by the time I sat down to write the thing, I had all the pictures in my head.

When I was a kid, I was always going to bed creating a story, and that was the birth of filmmaking for me. I would like going to the dream-state by telling the story to someone else in my mind. That was my imaginary friend; it was an imaginary audience listening to my story.

Stories develop from things I read and also from my own experiences and experiences of people I know.

I remember going through school and doing art, which was the only thing that I actually found fulfilling, and I couldn't really figure out why. Then I got into college and started messing around with photography, and I realised that it was about getting the images that were in my head out in a way that didn't have to be spelt correctly.

Every time I read a script, I see the movie in my head, and I try to see the best movie in my head because everybody interprets the movie differently.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes.