Daniel Mays Quotes

Novels will remain my meat and potatoes, what sustain me imaginatively.

We are both drawn to surreal situations so the writing was a joy.

If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.

For TV I don't think I could have gotten a better part than Uncle Junior because of the intimacy of the character based on David Chase's brilliant writing.

I would be happy to be labeled as a writer of offbeat stories. I don't know how to do anything else.

I have to believe everything I write is brand new and I'm writing in this way about these people in a completely new situation for the very first time.

In modern novels, there is no one I want to copy. My style 'is a poor thing, but it is my own.'

A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.

I only like to write shows that I feel like no one has seen before.

On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.

I like the way Wiseman builds a story in an unconventional way.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas about rhinoceros dentists.

Subject matter that is not bound to reality offers more opportunity to write a unique story and cinematically present it in very unique ways.

I am writing a book more improbable than 'The Interrogative Mood' that I call 'Manifesto'. It's two guys talking who speak artificially conveniently.

Sometimes, by using the most over-the-top, ridiculous plot device you can imagine, you get some interesting little conflicts and cool things that you might not otherwise have a chance to explore.

I write about real people in disguise. If anything, my characters are toned down-the truth is much more bizarre.

I try to make everything I write a little bit different. Those songs that go, 'I love you so much and you love me,' they're boring. If I'm going to write a love song, it's going to be a little bit tortuous.

I always was an early-morning or late-night writer. Early morning was my favorite; late night was because you had a deadline. And at four in the morning, you make up some of your most absurd jokes.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

I used to write books and plays in my mind, but I doubt that any of them would have been above the level of the cheapest dime novel.

I'm looking to find good stories, not big commercial pieces of work.

When you do fiction, it is your imagination you have put out there.

People think I write weird, but there are people at Death Equinox that make me look like Danielle Steele.

Something like 'Dr. Thirteen,' which features no big characters, was probably the most fun thing I've worked on because the story was so great, and it was written so well.