Steven Hall Quotes
I'm excited about how books work in a digital age. When you read a book, unlike a film, you are decoding symbols in order to 'see' the story, so it is collaborative in a way that a film can never be.
Quotes to Explore
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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But the process of making a film is not glamorous. Certainly not my films.
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I think you live a fuller life with someone else, you know, you're firing on all cylinders. It can be a nightmare at times, we all know that, but nevertheless in the end I think to have someone else's input on anything - a book, a meal, your children, life, a walk - is fantastic.
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I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.
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I know from an editor's point of view or a publisher's point of view it's easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I'd be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.
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Female characters in literature are full. They're messy: they've got runny noses and burp and belch. Unfortunately, in film, female characters don't often have that kind of richness.
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Webster and I are very aloof. The two of us go and sit there by ourselves. I sit by myself in the corner with my book and the newspaper. He kind of runs around a little bit, and then he goes and sits on top of the picnic table. He never plays with other little dogs.
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All my brother Eliot and I did as kids was film sketches.
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I think my printing to this day looks like the printing right out of a comic book. Actually, I always wanted to be in a comic book. I watched cartoons when I was a kid, too, and both comics and cartoons lit fire in my imagination. This realm holds a lot of interest for me, a lot of passion for me. So to be comic-ized, yeah, that's cool.
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A novelist's lack of awareness of and critical distance to his own body of work is due to a phenomenon that I have noticed in myself and many others: as soon as it is written, every new book erases the last one, leaving me with the impression that I have forgotten it.
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A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern.
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A film has its own life and takes its own time.
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Loads of computer graphics equals a terrible video in my book.
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The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.
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Now, I'll tell you something that might interest you. Casino Royale was the first Bond book that Ian Fleming ever wrote. And he couldn't get anybody to touch it, to publish it - he couldn't do anything about it at all. Nobody wanted to know.
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Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you're dealing with a lot more characters, a lot more locations, and you're able to rely on things that you just can never do on the stage.
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The most important thing about Spaceship Earth - an instruction book didn't come with it.
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I love to write a book out of questions; in fact, I think it's the only way my writing can operate, if there's something I don't understand.
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'Reinventing the Bazaar,' by John McMillan, is a great and fun introduction to the wild variety and importance of markets throughout history and around the world. I finally understood how a Middle Eastern souk actually works economically and how to compare that to modern-day telecom-spectrum auctions. I love that book.
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I did my first film when I was in the final year of my graduation. At that time, I was still a kid, and I couldn't read the industry very well.
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We just did a show in Providence, Rhode Island, and we got three puppy shots before we even got on the air, which was great. Although sometimes you get flashed by some puppies that you'd rather not see. They're more like mongrels.
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Once you've agreed the script, you must be willing to go as far as it needs to go on set.
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Being outside on your own in all weathers is exciting; it clears you out.
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I'm excited about how books work in a digital age. When you read a book, unlike a film, you are decoding symbols in order to 'see' the story, so it is collaborative in a way that a film can never be.
