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" The cast, led by the extraordinary Jennifer Lawrence, is absolutely wonderful across the board. It's such a pleasure to see how they've embodied the characters and brought them to life. "
Suzanne Collins
Extraordinary
Cast
See
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" I loved 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.' I read it later as an adult, but I loved 'We Have Always Lived in a Castle.' And that brings you around to 'The Lottery.' You can't pretend - it's a lottery in which you draw a name and people die. That's a short story, but it's such an incredible short story. "
Suzanne Collins
Name
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Short
" All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't. "
Suzanne Collins
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" I have a pretty big TV background, and I have clocked so many hours in so many writers' rooms over the years. "
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" I'm not comfortable around cameras. "
Suzanne Collins
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" If I have to pick one story that most influenced 'The Hunger Games,' it would be the Greek myth of Theseus, which I read when I was about 8 years old. In punishment for past deeds, Athens periodically had to send seven youths and seven maidens to a labyrinth. In the maze was this Minotaur, and it would eat them. "
Suzanne Collins
Story
Hunger
Punishment
" Whenever I write a story, I hope it appeals to both boys and girls. "
Suzanne Collins
Hope
Both
Boys And Girls
" When I got out of undergrad, I had a degree in theater and telecommunications. My first job, I was a news reporter for the local stories for NPR. Then I was a country-western DJ. I did data entry for a yearbook company. In my mid-20s I went back to grad school at NYU, and I specialized in playwriting. "
Suzanne Collins
Job
News
School
" There's a basis for the war, historically, in the 'Hunger Games,' which would be the third servile war, which was Spartacus' war, where you have a man who is a slave who is then turned into a gladiator who broke out of the gladiator school and led a rebellion and then became the face of the war. "
Suzanne Collins
War
Rebellion
School
" Kids have so much screen time, and it's a concern. I know how overloaded I can feel sometimes. "
Suzanne Collins
Know
Time
Sometimes
" I think we put our children at an enormous disadvantage by not educating them in war, by not letting them understand about it at an early age. "
Suzanne Collins
War
Our
Think
" One of the most memorable things I hear is when someone tells me that my books got a reluctant reader to read. "
Suzanne Collins
Me
Memorable
Someone
" My mother tried really hard to protect us, but occasionally, after afternoon cartoons of whatever was on... the nightly news would come on, and I'd see footage from the war zone, and I would hear the word 'Vietnam,' and I would know my dad was over there, and it was a very frightening experience for me. "
Suzanne Collins
News
Experience
Know
" I think people respond to dystopian stories because they're ways of acting out anxieties that we have and fears that we have about the future. So much media's coming at you over the Internet, your brain gets overloaded. You don't know what to do with it. And one thing you can do with it is read a story. "
Suzanne Collins
You
Think
People
" Katniss Everdeen owes her last name to Bathsheba Everdene, the lead character in 'Far From the Madding Crowd.' The two are very different, but both struggle with knowing their hearts. "
Suzanne Collins
Name
Struggle
Two
" The film opens up the world beyond Katniss' point of view, allowing the audience access to the happenings of places like the Hunger Games control room and President Snow's rose garden, thereby adding a new dimension to the story. "
Suzanne Collins
View
Control
Rose
" I've just had the opportunity to see the finished film of 'The Hunger Games.' I'm really happy with how it turned out. I feel like the book and the film are individual yet complementary pieces that enhance one another. "
Suzanne Collins
Book
Opportunity
Hunger
" If I took the 40 years of my dad talking to me about war and battles and taking me to battlefields and distilled it down into one question, it would probably be the idea of the necessary or unnecessary war. "
Suzanne Collins
War
Talking
Years
" When I was young, I was trained in stage fighting and rapier and dagger for several years. "
Suzanne Collins
Stage
Years
Young
" I started as a playwright. Any sort of scriptwriting you do helps you hone your story. You have the same demands of creating a plot, developing relatable characters and keeping your audience invested in your story. My books are basically structured like three-act plays. "
Suzanne Collins
Audience
Creating
Like
" It's amazing to see things that are suggested in the book fully developed and so brilliantly realized through the artistry of the designers. "
Suzanne Collins
Through
See
Things
" I think it's very uncomfortable for people to talk to children about war, and so they don't because it's easier not to. But then you have young people at eighteen who are enlisting in the army, and they really don't have the slightest idea what they're getting into. "
Suzanne Collins
Children
Think
You
" Director Gary Ross has created an adaptation that is faithful in both narrative and theme, but he's also brought a rich and powerful vision of Panem, its brutality and excesses, to the film as well. His world building's fantastic, whether it be the Seam or the Capitol. "
Suzanne Collins
Rich
Vision
World
" I'm not a very fancy person. I've been a writer a long time, and right now 'The Hunger Games' is getting a lot of focus. It'll pass. The focus will be on something else. It'll shift. It always does. And that seems just fine. "
Suzanne Collins
Long
Time
Long Time
" In high school for a couple years we did archery. "
Suzanne Collins
High
Years
School
" I wrote 'The Hunger Games' in a chair, like a La-Z-Boy chair, next to my bed. I had an office, but my kids sort of took it over. "
Suzanne Collins
Over
Bed
Chair
" 'The Underland Chronicles' is an unnecessary war for a very long time until it becomes a necessary war, because there have been all these points where people could have gotten off the train but they didn't; they just kept moving the violence forward until it's gone out of control. "
Suzanne Collins
Moving
People
Time
" If your parent is deployed and you are that young, you spend the whole time wondering where they are and waiting for them to come home. As time passes and the absence is longer and longer, you become more and more concerned - but you don't really have the words to express your concern. There's only this continued absence. "
Suzanne Collins
Words
Time
Parent
" In 'The Hunger Games,' in most people's idea, in terms of rebellion or a civil-war situation, that would meet the criteria for a necessary war. These people are oppressed, their children are being taken off and put in gladiator games. They're impoverished, they're starving, they're brutalized. "
Suzanne Collins
War
Meet
Situation
" I try to catch flies in cups and put them outside. After I wrote 'The Underland Chronicles'... well, once you start naming cockroaches, you lose your edge. "
Suzanne Collins
Outside
Edge
Lose
" Any time you read a book and get attached to the characters, to me it's always a shock when it goes from page to screen and it's not exactly what was in my head or what I was imagining it should be. "
Suzanne Collins
Always
You
Time