John Niven Quotes
The first book I bought with my own money as a teenager was Martin Amis's 'Money.' You know that thing when you read a book and you think, 'I'm going to have to read every word ever written by this man.'
Quotes to Explore
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Don't assume that the answers are out there in the form of somebody else already doing something. Sometimes they are. But you have to think beyond that.
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I'm awful with directions, and I'm not very handy around the house.
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I don't try to sugarcoat things, but I also think my books make positive statements about the people and values in small-town America.
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If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.
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Insight enables you make sure you don't allow negative beliefs to get permanently set in your thinking - just the same way you wouldn't want fractured bones to be permanently set into place.
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I'm consistently telling stories about the value of the human condition and connectedness and things like that.
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I have never spoken to Eminem. I've never even spoken to him once.
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If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.
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The three theater peeps I would love to dine with are Mel Brooks, because he is so funny; Stephen Sondheim, because he is a god-like genius; and Ethel Merman, to compare notes on fabulous belting.
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Every project has to stand on its own. It's a different identity within each project, and I feel like that's the way it should be.
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I can go to a country song, go right into it and make it sound authentic. And I think that's because of my ear as an impressionist.
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Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.
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I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.
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Make the wise man within you your living ideal.
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I've always gone for the more sensitive, bookish guy, totally. The jock boys, the sporty guys, I don't know... they just didn't do it for me.
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The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.
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I've written a screenplay that is a series of monologues and songs; they form this sort of human tapestry across time and place. The form is strange, but I find it really fascinating.
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I can't deal with someone flashy. That's so not me.
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There are a plenty of shots that I have been amazed by, but a lot of these shots are played because you have worn an iron mask. Take away the protection, and let me see if they play them. Don't forget that the past players did not have any protection.
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Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.
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Told a lot of stories as a child. Not 'Once upon a time' stories but, basically, outright lies. I loved lying and getting away with it!
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For a period in the '90s, I felt that the Cure was massively undervalued. But there has been a paradigm shift. There's a bunch of newer bands coming up who've grown up listening to the Cure and don't understand that you're not supposed to like us.
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The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy The books that people talk about we never can recall And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.
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The first book I bought with my own money as a teenager was Martin Amis's 'Money.' You know that thing when you read a book and you think, 'I'm going to have to read every word ever written by this man.'
