Joss Whedon Quotes

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

Sometimes strange and wonderful things will pop into my head. And sometimes I will see something in the world that is the beginning of a story. I always have a notebook with me so that I can write down what I see and hear.

I think at some level, it's just alchemy that we, as writers, can't explain when we write the characters. I don't set out to create the characters - they're not, to me, collections of quirks that I can put together. I discover the characters, instead. I usually go through a standard set of interview questions with the character in the beginning and ask the vital stuff: What's important to you? What do you love? Hate? Fear? .. and then I know where to start. But the characters just grow on their own, at a certain point. And start surprising me.

Words, living and ghostly, the quick and the dead, crowd and jostle the otherwise too empty corridors of my mind ... To move among this bright, strange, often fabulous herd of beings, to summon them at my will, to fasten them on to paper like flies, that they may decorate it, this is the pleasure of writing.

A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.

I'm not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living. When I was making "Star Wars," I wasn't restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, "I'm going to create a world that's fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it."

You can't be a writer and have nothing to write about. You have to have life experiences.

Whether you are inspired or not, the only way to unlock your creativity, is to start writing.

Maybe that's when bad scripts are written, when you choose the theme first. I consider that I've something to say when I've thought of a person, a moment, a single beat of the heart, that I think is true and interesting, and therefore should be seen.

Everything in the world was about creativity: belief and creation. Storytelling was the essence of both.

I wonder if I would have been capable of producing anything if I worked in a more conventional way with a prewritten script, because I'm of the procrastinator class.

If a writer stops observing, he is finished.

At the very beginning, it's a desire and that's not the same thing at all, because when you have the desire to do something, all the work you can do is a positive thing. It's not something that you calculate. An idea is something you work on to make it work and a desire is much deeper in a way. The immersion, it's classical, I watched a lot of movies.

I'm inspired by watching and listening to people. For example, my first novel, The Scale, came to life after I overheard two women discussing their struggle with their weight at the gym.

They say to just write about what's happening in your backyard because that's where you find the most creativity. It's in the DNA of the show. There's no question.

Everything starts with writing.

I'm just working with ideas in my head and with drawings that the artists did. And suddenly to see these things come to life in movies - it's just wonderful.

In movies, storytelling and every single art form, we're creating wonder. You're starting with a blank page and creating something that doesn't exist.

When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive.

I am just always, always paying attention - waiting for the words, or image, or name that will be the beginning of a story.

In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

What makes Disney movies and Pixar movies always so good, hey take time and they're constantly honing, and tweaking, and rejiggering things, and taking influences from every cog, including myself, that can help. Any place where there can be inspiration. They make every moment very layered and very rich.

Writing in a lot of ways feels more like excavation than construction. It feels like you're uncovering this thing bit by bit, discovering what it is, instead of constructing it upwards.

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop… suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across - each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip - is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.