Jane Espenson Quotes (15 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Jane Espenson: 15 quotes 0 likes

Famous Jane Espenson Quotes

“DeWitt: Loneliness leads to nothing good, only detachment. And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it.”

Jane Espenson

“If we can't write diversity into sci-fi, then what's the point? You don't create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.”

Jane Espenson

“Forgive my rudeness. I cannot abide useless people.”

Jane Espenson

“I've been a television writer for a dozen years, and I've been fortunate to put words in the mouths of some great female characters. They've been working women, mostly, and I like to think they've become role models for a generation of girls trying to figure out their futures.
But let's be honest: TV isn't going to change anyone's perceptions of working women in the real world just by promoting fictional females to ever-higher positions of authority. And I'm not doing my job if I put a woman's career before her character.”

Jane Espenson

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

“I watch a lot of TV, but I find that recently it’s largely oddball stuff … Scripted stuff sometimes feels like homework, like I'm scoping out the competition or something.”

Jane Espenson

Ain't It Cool News interview (17 July 2003)

“I love the way Law and Order doesn’t always put their heroes on the side of good. And sometimes they win, sometimes they lose and sometimes for the wrong reasons. I also think it’s interesting that there is a series that has remained story-driven in its, what, sixtieth season, right? If not for them, I would argue that all shows eventually become soap operas about the lives of the characters. Law And Order does what it does and does it well. It may simply be that you’re mistaking consistency for blandness, how ’bout that, fella?”

Jane Espenson

Response to interviewer declaring Law and Order "bland" in Ain't It Cool News interview (17 July 2003)

Jane Espenson Quotes about the world

“Children are the world's most ardent traditionalists. They like things stable and categorized.”

Jane Espenson

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)
Context: Children are the world's most ardent traditionalists. They like things stable and categorized. They want to know what girls can do and what girls can't do. Television, like it or not, teaches them a lot of these rules.

“Today the percentage of female judges, college professors and detectives seen on television is a pretty good reflection of the actual world. (In the case of judges, I wouldn't be shocked to find out the number on television exceeds the number in real life — what is it about those black robes that makes us think ovaries?)
But merely thrusting more women into more prestigious on-screen jobs doesn't necessarily make the working world a better place for women. If you were to show people images of two real-life professionals, one a man, one a woman, and ask them to rate their competence knowing nothing but job and gender — I bet people still give the guys the edge.
It's not television's fault, exactly. But television can help fix the problem. Not by writing women into better professions, but by more accurately showing them as complex people contending with the sort of snide, generous, ambitious, incompetent, sad and hilarious co-workers who populate real workplaces.”

Jane Espenson

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

“I can't make real-life workplaces safer and more fair for women just by showing them with briefcases or crossbows. But I can try to grant my characters the quirky gift of humanity — whether they're adjudicating torts or dishing tortes or saving the world. And hope the little girls watching do the rest.”

Jane Espenson

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

Jane Espenson Quotes

“Any story worth telling relates to real life in some meaningful way.”

Jane Espenson

"Caprica Producer Jane Espenson Redefines Racism in the BSG Universe" at AMCtv.com (April 2009) http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/2009/04/jane-espenson-interview.php
Context: Any story worth telling relates to real life in some meaningful way. Scifi allows you to tell meaningful stories without seeming too preachy — it adds a metaphorical layer between the story and the real world. Scifi is dismissed as ungrounded fluff, but it's actually the opposite.

Life , Way

“I hope I am pigeonholed with comedy. I’m really not interested in writing the darker stuff, the emotional stuff.”

Jane Espenson

"Jane Espenson - Interviewed at the Buffy soundstage" at BBC (23 August 2001) http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/interviews/espenson/printpage.html

Hope

“Moonlighting was funny, innovative, genre-busting chaos. Also, apparently, unsustainable. Sigh.”

Jane Espenson

Ain't It Cool News interview (17 July 2003) http://www.whedon.info/Jane-Espenson-Buffy-Tv-Series.h