Anyone can see that, say, superheroes and vampires perform well at the box office. That in turn can trigger competitive bidding situations and soaring fees for people who can bring these properties to the screen. The result can be a dramatic increase...
Keep writing. Try to do a little bit every day, even if the result looks like crap. Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect.
Coaches do so much research about a referee because they believe refereeing is such a crucial part of the game that the result may hinge on what we say or do. They probably know more about me than I know myself!
Phones with numerical keypads worked best for dialing phone calls. Incidentally, phone calls tend to be the primary function of a phone. 'Smartphones' completely ignore these basic facts, resulting in some of the least intelligent devices I've seen y...
I am an advocate for going to the doctor and going every year. I make sure that part of the checkup is spent talking about my heart with my doctor, and getting my numbers checked, and discussing the results. And I make sure that I understand the answ...
Da was a real fisherman. But it wasn't the catch that mattered, it was the skill of the cast, the preparation of the flies. I often think my inability to prepare, my desire to get going, are a direct result of watching my father making all those pain...
The great thing about books was the solidity of the written word. You might change and your reading might change as a result, but the book remained whatever it had always been. A good book was surprising the first time through, less so the second.
The most important thing is not to work on things that other people are working on because otherwise all you'll do is get the same result as everybody else and you won't make any discoveries, you'll just confirm what's already known.
If you have a strong opponent, a competition is stimulating. I am generally most open to ideas when I have had a bad result. In chess, too, players specialise. This specialty then becomes an entry barrier.
On Fantastic Mr. Fox, I got used to working with animated storyboards as a way of planning for the shoot. We did a lot of sequences that way with this movie. Partly as a result of that, I decided to build more sets in order to do certain shots.
I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.
I know we can fix our problems. When there are people in the room who care more about doing the job they were elected to do than they worry about winning reelection, it is possible to work together, achieve principal compromise, and get results for t...
We think we have to work because the advertising industry has elevated wants into needs. The newspapers and the television batter us incessantly with the latest 'must-haves', whether that's shoes, videogames or patio heaters. As a result, mums think ...
As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.
The CIA created, armed and financed the Contras. My father backed them with everything he had. It was my father's war, and almost everyone in Nicaragua has lost somebody as a result of it. I couldn't go down there, being his daughter, and expect not ...
If it happens that the human race doesn't make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who liv...
In the past 20 years alone, it adds up to more death than were caused by all the civil and international wars adn government repression of the entire twentieth century, the century of Hitler and Stalin. How much would we give to prevent those horrors...
Don't wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves. This is precisely why you're stuck. Starting without seeing the end is difficult, so we often wait until we see the end, scanning relentlessly for the right way, the best way ...
Listen, I've always been a situational writer. My idea of what to do with a plot is to shoot it before it can breed. It's true that when I start a story, I usually have a general idea of where it's going to finish up, but in many cases I end up in a ...
Crown Prince Leopold: You're late. Chief Inspector Uhl: My apologies, your Highness. I was attending to loose ends of the case. Crown Prince Leopold: Are there still loose ends? Chief Inspector Uhl: Very few. Crown Prince Leopold: Did he do it again?...
There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn't mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn't mind exploding her...
