Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I come from a family of writers. My mom had been a writer, nonfiction books, and her mother was a playwright in the 1930s and '40s. And my twin brother, Alexi, is a writer on 'The Following.' "
Noah Hawley
Family
Mother
Mom
Related Quotes:
" I guess I still have this motto: 'What else can I get away with?' And unpredictability in film - that's the hardest thing there is. "
Noah Hawley
Film
The Hardest Thing
Away
" 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
" 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
" Obviously, when you do something with drama and comedy in it - and by that, I mean a scene that has drama and comedy in it - you know the minute you introduce music, you're either scoring the drama or you're scoring the comedy, and therefore the scene becomes either dramatic or comedic. "
Noah Hawley
You
Comedy
Drama
" If there's one thing that television doesn't really do, and has never really done, is to tell a surreal story. "
Noah Hawley
Television
Story
Tell
" 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
" There's a degree to which music bypasses our rational brain and accesses our emotional core in a way that's really visceral and allows you to make a strong impression on people without necessary delivering information. "
Noah Hawley
You
Strong
People
" The first conversations I had for 'Legion' were right as the first year of 'Fargo' was ending. 'Daredevil' hadn't even begun then, so when signing on, I had no real sense of the onslaught that was coming. "
Noah Hawley
First
Real
Right
" You need a good James Clavell novel, I think, to make a good miniseries. "
Noah Hawley
Make
Need
Think
" I think a writer's first job is to entertain, even in novels: to tell a compelling story that pulls the reader along toward an end. At the same time, the best stories are character-driven. "
Noah Hawley
Time
Think
End
" The most dangerous thing, when you have a serious mental illness, is convincing yourself that you don't have it. And you see it all the time. People get on medication, and they feel better, and they stop taking it. And some flirt with unreality on some levels. But it feels so convincing to them that it feels real. "
Noah Hawley
Better
People
Time
" I was part of a writers' collective with 21 writers and filmmakers called the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. We had our own office space in this old converted dog and cat hospital, and we had a basketball hoop outside. I'd bring my dog to work every day and write. "
Noah Hawley
Dog
Day
Cat
" I think that we're pattern-seeking animals, and what we like best is a story where everything fits together, where there's no puzzle pieces left over. "
Noah Hawley
Together
Story
Animals
" The great thing about an anthology is that each year is its own 10-hour movie, and the only requirement is that it's the best 10-hour movie that I can make out of the story. "
Noah Hawley
I Can
Own
Best
" The last thing you want is to be desperate in Hollywood. "
Noah Hawley
Hollywood
Desperate
You
" One of the things that I've always appreciated about the 'X-Men' style of storytelling versus other Marvel stories is how fluid the line between good and bad and right and wrong is. "
Noah Hawley
Good
Style
Good And Bad
" I think for really good-hearted people, that idea of putting yourself in the shoes of a monster to figure out why they acted that way, that's a really frightening idea. "
Noah Hawley
Shoes
Yourself
Why
" The thing with making your art your business is: It's a business. You can't sit around waiting for the muse, especially when you run a show, and you're in production, and an outline is due, a script is due, and a reshoot is due. No. You look at the calendar, and you go, 'OK. I can write from 4 to 6.' So you write. "
Noah Hawley
Run
Look
Business
" There's the craft of acting, and then there's a quality. There's a quality that someone has. "
Noah Hawley
Someone
Quality
Then
" Experimental film by the '70s had become much more mainstream after 'Bonnie and Clyde' and stuff in the late '60s, when you were seeing bigger movies where people were exploring the medium a lot more. "
Noah Hawley
Movies
Seeing
People
" Anytime you want to create something different, you have to convince people that it's O.K. 'We'll be O.K. It's going to work out. It's going to be great.' "
Noah Hawley
Want
People
Great
" 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
" I did some feature work, then tried TV. I was always very aware that the only power that you have is the power of options. If the film industry dries up, then you focus on the TV or the books. For me, it was always about what story do I want to tell next? "
Noah Hawley
Power
Me
You
" 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
" I'm Kubrick without the O.C.D. "
Noah Hawley
Kubrick
Without
" 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
" The first dumb idea was to do it at all - to take 'Fargo,' this beloved classic, and turn it into a television show. The second dumb idea, when you do it and it works, was to throw everything out and start again. "
Noah Hawley
Start
You
Television
" You've got to give an audience something to root for. The minute you get into more dystopian shows, where everything's really dark, and no one has any hope, and there's no positive goal we're working toward, it's a bummer. You run out of gas with them. Because you need to know, 'What am I in this for? What am I rooting for?' "
Noah Hawley
Positive
Hope
Goal
" I sat down to take a break from writing a book and wrote a spec feature that would end up being the movie 'Lies & Alibis' with Steve Coogan. "
Noah Hawley
Book
Writing
Up
" Everyone always says that conflict is drama, and I agree, but I also don't think you need drama everywhere. Or conflict everywhere. "
Noah Hawley
Think
Agree
Conflict