Antony Johnston Quotes
My process is kind of intuitive - I think about how a character will speak according to their station and personality, occasionally making notes with guidelines for their mannerisms, and then I just sort of crack on and write it.
Quotes to Explore
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A book is not an example of 'women's writing' simply because it is written by a woman. Writing may become 'women's writing' when it could not have been written by a man.
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Los Angeles is peopled by waiters and carpenters and drivers who are there to be actors.
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I can't say I'm having trouble with my husband or that I have a stubborn child.
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When people don't understand my work, I don't feel like explaining.
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People are wired for lots of things. We're wired for novelty. We're wired for humor. We're wired for new pieces of information that surprise us in some way or add value to our lives. We're wired for fear.
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I did every job under the sun from bartending to ushering to temping.
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I like a twisted sense of humour. On 'A History of Violence,' David Cronenberg and I would be doing the grimmest scenes and laugh a lot.
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My first book was poetry, but I didn't write it first. I wrote it third. So my first two books were prose.
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In the end, you have to protect yourself at all times.
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When I grew up, I thought I was Jewish. Now I don't consider myself Jewish. I consider myself a Kabbalist.
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A prince should be slow to punish, and quick to reward.
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A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.
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Even as a kid, I was a businessman. I figured out that if you plucked all the berries off my neighbor's tree and smashed them up, they made a Nickelodeon Gak-type consistency. I sold them to all the neighborhood kids and made stacks of quarters. Of course, the berries were poisonous, and I got in all types of trouble.
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I have been working for over 30 years and am always wondering about where I am and where I am going. It does not stop and become a fixed event of achievement.
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Oil is ancient wealth in the ground.
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I don't plot with huge detail, just big moments and important elements, and then I have a structure but can fly by the seat of my pants when I write.
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I like jazz, rock n' roll, some hip hop - I can't think of any music I don't like.
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I was impressed by the Taj Mahal. A good bit of work, well looked after, worth paying money to see.
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You have a tremendous advantage over the man who does you an injury: You have it within your power to forgive him, while he has no such advantage over you.
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We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge
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I do read P.D. James because she pays much more attention to character, to a particular atmosphere or setting. But most mystery writers, I think, are controlled by the plot.
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Casting is everything. Getting the person that you imagined is this character and then seeing what they bring to it.That's why you hire them, so why tell somebody first what it is you want? I'm more curious to see what they bring to it and then be inspired by it and say: "OK, what if you tried this?" or "What would happen if ... ?"
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My process is kind of intuitive - I think about how a character will speak according to their station and personality, occasionally making notes with guidelines for their mannerisms, and then I just sort of crack on and write it.
