John Niven Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
I still have a fear of theater. I don't know if I will manage that. I used to do it. I developed a bit of a phobia. It's not a real phobia. I can go in and watch.
-
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?
-
Part of Michael's uniqueness, I think, comes from the fact that he worked with music. He had a tape which he gave me with many different compositions, really eclectic. These pieces of music were sources of inspiration.
-
When I'm working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till makeup comes off. I just want everyone to be at ease, and not have the show's creators think, 'Oh my god, he's so English, why did we hire him?'
-
If I'm offered a good case in Florida or a good case somewhere else, South Florida will win every time.
-
The best time to expand is when people are asleep at the wheel.
-
Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it's like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful.
-
I really believe that when you're playing a character that everything is contained in the script. If I'm pulling from things from my own life, then I think I'm being disingenuous to the character and the story.
-
I have big hands. I can't do the touch-screen thing. I'm a button guy. I want to press buttons.
-
Your mind is what makes everything else work.
-
I never said most of the things I said.
-
I'm a hybrid, and I kind of like that. Raised by African parents, growing up I lived between Burkina Faso and Stains, a suburb just outside of Paris. In Stains, I had all the cultures in the world on my doorstep, and that opens up your mind.
-
There's no regrets for me.
-
The American public got to see for themselves every day, all day, how this trial progressed. There's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works.
-
'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vasquez's prose is evident, captured in Anne McLean's idiomatic English version. All the novel's characters are well imagined, original and rounded.
-
It is standard practice for corrupt leaders who are seeking a certain political outcome to hype or manipulate a terror threat or a threat of violent domestic subversion. While sometimes the threat is manufactured, frequently the hyped threat is based on a real danger.
-
I'm not going to be a ten or twelve grand-slam winner. It's not going to happen.
-
It goes without saying that it's hard to attain a certain level of success.
-
We are but the instruments or assistants, by whom God works.
-
When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different.
-
Writing is a sufficiently lonely and mysterious pastime that I don't begrudge myself a talisman or two, so long as they don't become ways of distracting myself from the glum inescapability of actual work.
-
It's an extension of what I do also as part of making my living - I go into schools and work with kids on writing, and I do assembly programs often. Each one is different because each school has different requirements.
-
You adjust what you do depending on the actor. You evolve a vocabulary and a way of language and talking with each actor.
-
I love writing Scottish dialogue.
