Noah Hawley quotes

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)

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

Half of a broadcast show, in my experience, is things happening, and the other half is people talking about how they feel about the things that happened. And so there's this sense of everyone saying their subtext out loud.

Noah Hawley

What success has done is present me with a lot of opportunities, and I haven't necessarily learned to say 'no' as well as I should have.

Noah Hawley

I don't think we have to suffer personally to make great art. If you're prepared and organized, and you know what you're looking for, you can make great art and then go home.

Noah Hawley

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

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

I'm a big believer that the structure of stories should reflect the content of the story.

Noah Hawley

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

The last thing you want is to be desperate in Hollywood.

Noah Hawley

The thing that scares us the most is when familiar things operate in unfamiliar ways. (Noah Hawley)

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

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

I think this idea of fighting the enemy within is sort of more interesting than fighting an external enemy.

Noah Hawley

Writing is this odd act, right? To sit and type, or write by hand, or whatever people do. And it requires a real discipline because it is really a sheer act of will that you're creating something, and you're doing it by yourself.

Noah Hawley

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

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

What's great is that each medium has a unique set of things that it does and does well. Film is a visual medium, and obviously, you can't fit a whole book into two hours unless you're really economical about it. Obviously, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and on some level, it's sort of true.

Noah Hawley

People, they don't know how to bend; they just break.

Noah Hawley

The anthology format is completely normal to me. That's just how TV works in my experience.

Noah Hawley

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)

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

My goal is always to make something unpredictable that feels inevitable in the end. It's getting harder to do that. Audiences are so sophisticated and so smart.

Noah Hawley

I don't write these stories for the rewards that come back to me. I write them because I have to write them. It's a sickness on some level. It's a compulsion.

Noah Hawley

If there's one thing that television doesn't really do, and has never really done, is to tell a surreal story.

Noah Hawley

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Noah Hawley

Noah Hawley - Image

Photo: Dominick D, CC BY-SA 2.0

Occupation: American Producer
Born: 1967
Quotes count: 39

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