Nahnatchka Khan Quotes

In TV writing, I felt like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There's so much more freedom in fiction writing.

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

As a screenwriter, you have to let go, and you have to hand your baby over and let it go off into the world, which is entirely appropriate.

I don't think anyone will believe me, but I've never been pressured by a publisher to churn out a book.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

I think it's always good for the author to stay a good cattle prod's distance from the actual moviemaking.

I write what I write.

Being an author is always like being a well-run dictatorship - it's all one person speaking.

That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.

The greatest thing that you have when you're a showrunner is this opportunity to create worlds.

I write my books never thinking of an actor.

As much as I really like the screenwriting thing, the novel is where the author has so much control.

I do better just letting the stories develop. I don't outline very well, and I can't follow it if I do. Once I've outlined it, why write the damn book?

When I write, I try not to cast in my head, because then I'm writing to a major movie star, and it picks up those ticks, and that's not what I want to do.

Writers need restrictions. If somebody just says, "Hey, do you want to write a novel, or an article, or a movie, or a short story, you get shut down."

I don't think I have a very novelistic brain. I like to read, but I don't know if I could ever write a novel.

There's so much control, so many executive producers, so many people looking over their shoulder, so many people trying to second-guess the boss. The space for writers and directors and actors to be creative is zilch.

In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.

Research can be a boon to a novelist - there are more things in heaven and Earth than can be dreamt of in a single writer's philosophy - or it can become a hindrance, a thick layer of algae that weighs down the storytelling.

It's nice to stretch in different directions and use different muscles. You can get swallowed into Hollywood, where it's all about bums on seats and how commercial a film is.

I think writing gives me creative freedom.

I probably won't direct the stories I am writing but will star in them.

I have this TV pilot I was writing for and a couple of films. It's just a different way to express myself.

Actors don't request what scenes to be written in. That's just not how it works.

For a writer, working in television is an incredibly rewarding medium. You're in charge of all aspects of production and get to see your vision come to life every week.