Craig Mazin Quotes

What I really like doing is storytelling, finding the body language that is necessary for the story. And when I'm doing it and it's working, I'm thrilled.

A script can just be a blueprint, and you've got to go in and build it and color it in and paint it.

I think acting, for me, is about play. It's about time, and it's about feeling, like there's a story to tell and I can tell it through my body and my voice.

I'll usually see a scene in my head, playing like a movie trailer. After I've written that scene, everything takes off from there.

I think the most important thing when you're telling a story is to just tell the story as best as you possibly can.

You get very possessive about characters, you feel you can see it in your mind and you want to play it.

When you're on camera, even though you try to lose yourself in the character, you are aware that there is a camera there capturing every moment of it visually. With doing a voiceover job, you are worried about the sound of it, and you have to make all those visual colors come out with your sound.

Directing is so interesting. You know, it just sort of encompasses everything that you see, that you know, that you've felt, that you have observed.

Writers divide fairly cleanly into those who only work through what they hear and those who are more visual. I am the latter, where I lie down on my office floor and play scenes through my head to - cinematically, several times with different elements - to see what works. I can't write a scene until I can see it.

I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it's like a template; I'll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I'm all right.

If you have a great script and great dialogue, you don't need to improvise.

I do a lot of improvising when I'm writing, and I work very hard on the scripts... they are written very much in an actor-friendly way.

That's what acting is. You're not alone. It's reacting. That's what we do.

I always had an interest in telling stories.

I just want to be a good storyteller.

There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life.

Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.

Being on 'The Office' prepared me for drama. Comedy got me ready, but once you get down to it, they're two sides of the same thing. I mean, the delivery has to be different - in drama, there's more time to breathe, and comedy's all about hitting the joke.

Some of our best writers are self taught. Screenwriting is a combo of craft and art. The craft part can be taught, about how to be visual and economical with scenes. However, finally it's the individuality of the writer that will come into play.

Actors are the most important. Performance is what matters. Nothing matters more than the actors; they have to perform. No one else can give life to the characters. Audiences must believe the characters as real and the moments as real.

Acting is about finding truth and finding the way to convey the truth.

I am really interested in storytelling in general - nothing is off-limits!

Acting - you're taking someone else's visions and someone else's inspirations, and it's up to you to portray that to everyone watching the film.

I was an actor for a little bit. That's when I started to understand fiction - and that one of the great things about fiction is that you're dependent on the characters as much as they're dependent on you.

I always like to tell a story.