Real Life Stories Quotes

Usually I read biographies of interesting people. I am not attracted to novels - make-believe, or recreations of what people think life should be.

I read autobiographies because there is too much fiction in my life.

I love documentary because it's alive.

I call [ordinary people] real people, because they have in themselves an incredible treasure - stories, a way of speaking, a way of sharing, an innocence and a perversity which I find very interesting to discover little by little.

You can write a whole fiction, and you're talking to people who have gone through that, in real life. But the truth of it is that when you're talking to those people, you don't care about your movie anymore. You just want to hear about what they have gone through. You want all of the details. It's amazing.

The people I always loved listening to had a little bit of dirt under their fingernails because they had done some living and had these stories to talk about.

I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt.

I describe incidents which may or may not have happened but which are true.

Writers do draw inspiration from their own lives, which, quite frankly, might be more interesting than fiction.

I'm a big fan of non-fiction, and I am a believer that fact is much more exciting than fiction.

A bonus, being a writer, is that the true-life source material is fabulously bizarre. There's so much corruption, violence and free-floating depravity that the well never runs dry, whether you're a novelist, a journalist, or both.

It was exciting to work with director Jennifer Baichwal, who made Manufactured Landscapes and others, on the film of Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. It's called, simply, PAYBACK. Jennifer didn't want to do a transliteration of the book, a kind of illustrated version, but to go into the core of the book: owing and being owed, paying and paying back, on all sorts of levels. So she found real-life, visceral stories that embodied the themes of the book.

I think that truth is stranger than fiction, and it's nice to know the people you're making a movie about.

In the midst of global recession, in the face of uncertainty about what's going to happen next, film looks for inspiration to real people.

As much as I do love real-life stories they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt. . . . For some reason, it's always the pain that gets you.

'Aye Zindagi' is a show which is about stories inspired by real-life incidents. You might be able to relate to these stories, as it can be about anyone around you.

Nonfiction brought me back to earth and sobered me up whenever it seemed like I'd become too drunk on the lives and loves of imaginary people, but that doesn't mean it was any less thrilling or transporting, although it was often more illuminating.

It's wonderful to do these great blockbusters and bigger pictures, but my heart is always with true stories.

Everything I've written is based on something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.

I think the best research is people you meet and things that they say, rather than second hand accounts of something. I think when you meet someone and talk to them, then you get the real thing and that's what you can use. That's the material you can actually put on the page.

Though 'Shahid' was the only true story, what happened in 'Trapped' can happen to anyone. And I am sure there are people like Newton, and there are boys who are naive, sweet, and rowdy, like my part in 'Bareilly'... The humanness is something I loved.

With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories.

When you deal with nonfiction you deal with human characters.