Nina Bawden Quotes
All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.
Quotes to Explore
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All of my problems are rather complicated - I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It's like a personal therapy.
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A story never looks as good as when the other fellow buys it.
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It's important for cinema to keep on evolving: for people, and not only teenagers, to be able to go to a movie that has huge epic scope but has an intellectual and real story to tell.
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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
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Sometimes the kids come up with better endings than the real story.
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A good story will keep you wondering about what's happening, what's going on, where does this go? Now it's going to go that way, now it's going to go that way. It has to do that. If it's predictable, it's just boring.
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This basic thing I always do: 'What happened between the character's birth, and page one of the script?' Anything that's not in the story, I'll fill in the blanks.
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You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow.
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My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.
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I never want to write a book just to tell a story. There is always something deeper going on.
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It's really a sad story, and I liked that. The songs on this album talk about relationships in every aspect.
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There really isn't a story that you can't tell inside of it. It's very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you're not at all limited.
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As a writer, I had learned a lot on 'Margin Call' about embracing the weaknesses of a narrative and of a project. A story always has an inherent narrative weakness.
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My books are character-driven. They're not driven by the story.
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I like to let the story flesh itself out, and usually, the characters make their own decisions as things get under way. Dialogue especially seems to write itself once I'm familiar with the characters and their backgrounds.
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Writers are essential. Readers are essential. Publishers are not.
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Moviewise, I would love to make the story of princess Erendira. She was a 16 year old princess/warrior who led her tribe in war against the Spanish around 1513. She almost defeated them, and the Tarascans were the only tribe the Aztecs couldn't defeat.
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I try to tell a story musically in a song.
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A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.
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Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns.
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I still get a few dirty looks over the racks in the supermarket, but nobody kicks me in the shins on Water Street. I've made sort of a point, apart from being a social dud, not to fraternize with the people I write about.
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My job has always been to hold a mirror up to nature.
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The deepest depth of vulgarism is that of setting up money as the ark of the covenant.
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All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.
