Malorie Blackman Quotes

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

Probably 90 percent of the stuff I make has inevitably been done before... Whether it's playing Hamlet, which has been on the go for 400 years, or pieces from the cinematic world that also have been essayed before, I feel released by that.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.

It's hard to read good fiction when I am writing, because if it is really good I catch myself sort of inadvertently imitating a great writer.

It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

A lot of art and visual crafts are based on appropriating things.

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters' lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams... all arrive unbidden when I'm getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding.

That's the great thing about being a writer. You dream up amazing questions... and then dream up even more amazing answers.

But at a certain point, you have to take your influence and find your own voice if you want to become a relevant artist.

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

I think plays deserve other interpretations. They should live on, and other people should should take their hand at them. I'm very supportive of that.

I am always searching for something different or something fresh, something hasn't been done. But the truth is, at the end of the day, we're all sort of retelling something. We're doing a version of something that's already been done.

When I take from my influences, it's rare that I do it literally.

I take things that already exist and just push them.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.

To me, my favorite comic book movies were the ones that were never based on comic books, like Unforgiven. That's more the kind of thing that get us inspired. Usually when you say something's a comic book movie, it means you turn on the purple and green lights. Suddenly that means it's more like a comic book, and It's not really like that.

This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today-explode-f ly-apart-disint egrate! The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, by reading your story, will catch fire, too?

To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, 'Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.'

The hardest part is not to repeat yourself. I don't really believe my core obsessions are going to change, but you need to look for ways to express them that are different. The main reason for doing that is not to bore yourself, and obviously, I don't want to bore readers.