Anthony McCarten Quotes
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Truth is seldom appreciated and never understood, whereas a flattering lie is always appreciated and instantly understood.
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When I was growing up in the '80s and working in the theater, David Mamet exploded with a whole new reworking of what dialogue should sound like. It was punchy and raw and repetitive, bursting with dynamic. I remember that switching on a lot of lights for me.
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Since my student days, I'd been a fan of those books with titles like 'Great Speeches that Changed the World,' as I loved the idea that the right person with the right words at the right time could really make a difference.
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Before Churchill had done anything else, he was a writer. He believed to the core that words matter. They count. They can change the world.
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We're living in extraordinary times, all the time. The issues that assail us are perennial. They haven't changed since the Greeks picked up a pen.
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One of the real ways out of conflict is humour. It builds bridges; it's a weapon against rigid ideology, narrow thinking, intolerance.
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One of the great things about Churchill is that he had the guts to say the unpalatable, to level with the people, even if it cost him politically to tell them the truth.
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My routine is to create activities for myself unrelated to writing that allow little time for writing. This means that when I do get the chance to write, it is like a stolen luxury, something clandestine and almost forbidden.
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It turns out we are all quite easily swayed if someone knows what they are doing - which is a great thing and a dangerous thing.
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I'm still always surprised that anyone might be interested in my work or me.
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Commercial success and quality are not necessarily allied.
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At some point early on, I realized that three of the greatest speeches ever delivered were by Winston Churchill, and they were written and delivered within a four-week period of each other.
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There's a really fine line between artistic license and artistic licentiousness. And history is a lousy filmmaker. It doesn't give you all the ingredients you need. No story will quite fulfill that three-act structure.
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I have three favorite cities: London, Wellington, and Los Angeles. What makes them so good? The friends who live there.
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The New Zealand sense of humor is tough and realistic. Jokes are not surreal; they are about life and death and tough decisions.
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I still present myself as a New Zealander, answering people's questions about New Zealand and contributing in my own unlikely way to the global perception that Kiwis can and do fly high.
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The more I read about the rules the great orators used, the more I realised, of course, this is how you stir people's hearts, and you persuade and cajole and move people out of fixed positions. The techniques are quite menacingly easy.
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When I grew up, my house contained only two books: the Bible and the 'Edmonds' cookbook. We were a working-class household. Books were a poor second to the television, which was always on, usually with me in front of it.
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At 17, I wanted to be a rock star.
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If it's correct to say that there is a closing of minds around the world, story is one of the most powerful agents of reviving the conversation between ideas. Ultimately, that's all stories are trying to do - open the conversation. They cannot give a proscription. It's not clairvoyant art.
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No murder or sin or act of barbarism or cruelty has ever been committed by a person fully absorbed in the reading of a book. By this fact alone, we can conclude that readers are nicer people, at least until they put the book down. When we are reading, we are better.
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Reading is essential to human life. When the last reader dies, humanity will be at an end.
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I was born to a very large family, one of 7 kids. I grew up with carnivals and chaos all around me, so I can write anywhere.
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My experience is, the writer I was when I began was only a fraction of what I feel capable of doing now. Don't stand on that threshold saying, 'I'm uncertain about my talent.' You can grow that part of yourself.