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" As a storyteller, you have the story that you tell, and you have the way you can tell it, and both are equally important. "
Noah Hawley
Important
Way
Both
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" It's a human desire to be scared. On some level, that's how we survived - that sense of fear and danger. Our lives are much safer, so we gravitate to those stories that makes us feel those things and learn lessons, even if it's just, 'What are you doing? Don't go in the basement!' "
Noah Hawley
Desire
Learn
You
" The last thing you want is to be desperate in Hollywood. "
Noah Hawley
Hollywood
Desperate
You
" When I took on 'Fargo,' I thought, 'Well, this is just a terrible idea. Four people will watch it, and they'll hate-watch.' But that allowed me to just go for it and take the risks. "
Noah Hawley
Go For It
Risks
Me
" When I sold my first book, 'A Conspiracy of Tall Men,' it was part of a two-book deal. It wasn't hugely lucrative, but it was enough money for me to quit the paralegal job I had in San Francisco. "
Noah Hawley
Enough
Me
Job
" I think people used to read 'War and Peace,' and now they don't; now they sit around with their tablets and watch 'Downton Abbey' and 'Breaking Bad' or whatever, and they want the things that they watch to be better so that they can feel better about themselves for watching it. "
Noah Hawley
War
Think
People
" My mom never went to college, so she just assumed the writer identity, and that was always really inspiring to me. It's not something you need nine levels of education for. It's really an identity that you claim for yourself, and then you have to make yourself one. "
Noah Hawley
Yourself
Me
Identity
" Greatness and fiasco is the same. You're reaching for something just out of your grasp, and if you get it, it's great, and if you don't, it's a disaster. "
Noah Hawley
Same
Great
Greatness
" Making 'Fargo' for FX has been the highlight of my career. A writer can search his or her whole career for a network partner who truly understands and encourages their vision. For me, the search is over. "
Noah Hawley
Vision
Career
Her
" I try to approach the film medium as a novelist and the novel medium as a filmmaker on some level. It's that question: Do we think in pictures, or do we think in language? And the novelist believes one thing, and the filmmaker believes another thing - and I'm fascinated by that balance. "
Noah Hawley
Think
Try
Balance
" There have been days where I've had two writers' rooms or three writers' rooms going, and you walk back and forth. And then you sort of throw yourself on the sofa, and you go, 'Just talk at me for, like, 20 minutes,' and my brain will catch up with this particular story. But I find that exciting. "
Noah Hawley
Walk
Story
Me
" I'm on a lot of airplanes. There are definitely times when I just vapor-lock. I'm on the plane, and I have so much to do, I just don't know what to do. It never lasts for very long. It might last for the flight. "
Noah Hawley
Never
Long
Just
" I think this idea of fighting the enemy within is sort of more interesting than fighting an external enemy. "
Noah Hawley
Fighting
Interesting
Enemy
" When Fox asked me if I'd consider taking on The X-Men universe for television, my first thought was, 'What would you do with those stories or that genre that hasn't been done?' "
Noah Hawley
You
Thought
Universe
" You need a good James Clavell novel, I think, to make a good miniseries. "
Noah Hawley
Make
Need
Think
" One of the things I've always loved about genre, comic books, science fiction and fantasy is that there's a certain level of playfulness to them, and pure imagination and creativity. "
Noah Hawley
Loved
Imagination
Science
" For some reason, I tend to take on the stuff that people are really passionate about. If you make a list of people you don't want to offend, it's Vonnegut readers, comic book fans, and Coen brothers enthusiasts. "
Noah Hawley
Book
People
Want
" There's this common sense idea that in order to appeal to the biggest number of people, you have to write something very general, but my experience is the more specific you make something, the more people respond to it, in a very odd way. "
Noah Hawley
People
Common Sense
Experience
" There's a sense you get from the Coens' work, like 'No Country for Old Men,' where you put these characters in situations, and you just let this painful amount of time take place. Part of the tension is just how long it takes to get out of that scene. "
Noah Hawley
Long
You
Work
" What makes something tragic is that it could've been averted at multiple points. "
Noah Hawley
Makes
Multiple
Something
" A novel is a relationship, you know? When you read a book, the writer has done half the work, and you're doing half the work. You're providing the imagination; the words are turning into pictures in your mind. There's an active relationship that's going on. "
Noah Hawley
Book
Work
Relationship
" There's the craft of acting, and then there's a quality. There's a quality that someone has. "
Noah Hawley
Someone
Quality
Then
" 'Fargo' is a tragedy with a happy ending. So you need to have that tragic underpinning, that all of this could be avoidable, and that's what makes it tragic. It's about the use of violence, and the fact that the tension in anticipation of violence and the tension in anticipation of a laugh are sort of the same. "
Noah Hawley
Ending
You
Violence
" It used to be for writers that that six seasons and a movie thing, that's the holy grail as writers - your series goes eight, 10 seasons, you're set for life. "
Noah Hawley
You
Used
Life
" TV is all about learning to write in someone else's voice, so if you do it long enough without selling your own project, they assume you don't have your own voice; you're just a good mimic. "
Noah Hawley
Voice
Long
Learning
" There are things we can control and the things we can't control. I can't control how people react to the work I do. "
Noah Hawley
People
Work
Control
" I see myself as a first-draft writer, so when I sit down to write something, the first draft is usually pretty close to the end draft. "
Noah Hawley
Sit
Myself
End
" I always feel like you can take a genre that has a familiar structure to it and then reinvent it as a character piece. Suddenly, what's old is new again. With 'Fargo,' I adapted a movie without any of the characters or the story. Yet somehow it feels like 'Fargo.' "
Noah Hawley
Story
You
Feel
" I'm attracted to ensembles: you get a lot of really good moving pieces. It's sort of like a horse race in a way, especially when you know that everyone is on this collision course. It's like, 'Who's going to make it?' And you can put people together in unexpected pairings. "
Noah Hawley
Horse
People
Moving
" A book is full of ideas. You just live with what you read for so much longer. A lot of the times, nowadays, with a movie or TV show, it's like, 'Oh, it's entertainment!' And you never think about it again. "
Noah Hawley
Never
Ideas
Think
" People, they don't know how to bend; they just break. "
Noah Hawley
Know
Bend
Break