Ideas, p. 23
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: An idea is a thought. It's a thought that holds more than you think it does when you receive it. But in that first moment there is a spark. In a comic strip, if someone gets an idea, a lightbulb goes on. It happens in an instant, just as in life.
It would be great if the entire film came all at once. But it comes, for me, in fragments. That first fragment is like the Rosetta stone. It's the piece of the puzzle that indicates the rest. It's a hopeful puzzle piece.
In Blue Velvet, it was red lips, green lawns, and the song — Bobby Vinton's version of "Blue Velvet". The next thing was an ear lying in a field. And that was it.
You fall in love with the first idea, that little tiny piece. And once you've got it, the rest will come in time.
“The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.”
New York Times (October 9, 1985)
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Graham Greene 164
English writer, playwright and literary critic 1904–1991Related quotes
“He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth.”
Part IV “Home” chapter 5 (p. 501)
Adulthood Rites (1988)
“Things always seem to glide away.
They come to you, stay a moment, then leave again.”
Source: Getting the Girl
As quoted in Woman As Writer (1978) by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, p. 42
Context: The preoccupation of the novelist: how to capture the living moments, was answered by the diary. You write while you are alive. You do not preserve them in alcohol until the moment you are ready to write about them.