Jonathan Nolan Quotes
-
Typically with HBO shows, the ninth episode often winds up being a big one and when lots of exciting stuff happens. And then the tenth one is the more placid, character-based one.
→ -
You'd have a quality insurance department, where they're making sure there aren't any glitches or weird things, and that the guests have a great experience and seamless experience. You'd also have security. So, we laid out the corporate structure, and then we cherry-picked from that the people who would be brought into the most conflict and the most day-to-day relationship with each other and with the hosts.
→ -
I was definitely looking for a reason to impose rules in the story during the writing process... a set of reasons that you could graph for why it's not chaos and anarchy - for why it has to be order, and why you need architects and an architectural brain to create the world of the dream for the subject to enter.
→ -
We are the only instrument for understanding the universe. We have to ground it in human beings.
→ -
Even if you're not a parent, you have parents and you've been in those situations where there's a certain kind of goodbye - nothing this extreme exists, but I think that's what everyone holds onto, that common denominator that runs through this that everyone can understand.
→ -
I've worked in the movie business for many, many years, where you have lots of days and lots of money. It's really mainly about time. We always try to conceive all of our action from a place of, "What can we shoot that looks fantastic?," rather than trying to do the kinds of thing that you would be able to accomplish in a movie.
→ -
Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.
→ -
Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. You have to trust me. If this moment is repeated enough, if you keep trying — and you have to keep trying — eventually you will come across the next item on your list.
→ -
I always love it best when you have a project where there is this commingling of the subject matter and the way in which you're recording that subject matter.
→ -
Here's the truth: People, even regular people, are never just any one person with one set of attributes. It's not that simple. We're all at the mercy of the limbic system, clouds of electricity drifting through the brain.
→ -
One of the things that's really fun to tap in with television right now is this sort of explosion, the peak TV moment that we're in, people are exploring different modes of storytelling here. But one of the exciting things here is being able to commit upfront to a big, big, big story.
→ -
The secret to all drama, film, TV, or books - the thing that people respond to most, and the thing I find myself as a viewer feeling most interested in, is the idea of change.
→ -
I don't think anyone really understands why a show works or why it doesn't.
→ -
For me, the attraction of TV is that you continue to get to tell those stories and refine those characters. The other thing is that TV, in the last years, got really, really, really good.
→ -
You get to a certain moment where you realize all those humans who landed on the moon did so in between Chris [Nolan] being born and me being born and no one had gone back since, all these Super-8 films we grew up watching of rocket launches, you get to a certain age and you realize all the speeches about going back, they're speeches, there's no money there, we're not going back.
→ -
One of the things with our show is posing a lot of questions, but getting a lot of answers too.
→ -
When J.J. [Abrams] called Lisa [Joy] and myself, he pitched us this idea of, what if we turn the structure around and started with the hosts. For us, that gave us a way to play with everything that we're interested in, all at once. It's the ultimate playground for us because we deal with questions about artificial intelligence, which is something I've long been fascinated by, but also human intelligence, or the lack thereof, human behavior, and interactive, immersive storytelling.
→ -
How can you forgive if you can’t remember to forget?
→ -
I'm a big believer in pose some questions and then answer a few of them before you move onto the next set of questions.
→ -
None of us like violence in the real world, but we're fascinated with it onscreen.
→ -
You know, we certainly have a great budget on the show, but the expansions to world of the show really arise because, and this is kind of the idea of the premise of the show, where is each week you're kind of meeting . . . It's random access.
→ -
I'm hoping that the suspension of the space program is just that, a suspension, and that it's not the final say in the matter, because I think we need it.
→ -
I don't like to talk about messages so much with films simply because it's a little more didactic. The reason I'm a filmmaker is to tell stories and so you hope that they will have resonance for people and for the kind of things you're talking about.
→ -
I'm a big believer in practical and location photography.
→ -
We live in a moment in history in which our privacy may not be important.
→ -
You're different. You're more perfect. Time is three things for most people, but for you, for us, just one. A singularity. One moment. This moment. Like you're the center of the clock, the axis on which the hands turn. Time moves about you but never moves you. It has lost its ability to affect you. What is it they say? That time is theft? But not for you. Close your eyes and you can start all over again. Conjure up that necessary emotion, fresh as roses.
→ -
Time eventually convinces most of us that forgiveness is a virtue. Conveniently, cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a certain distance.
→ -
We're gonna play a little bit of a game here [Person of Interest movie]. Greg and I felt like we had responsibility when we wrapped up the pilot, to have a roadmap for where the show went. When we pitched the pilot, we knew what we wanted the last episode to be, the last image, I think we even know what the last song is.
→ -
Believing the lie that time will heal all wounds is just a nice way of saying that time deadens us.
→ -
We're going to leave this planet at some point further than we have, we're going to go beyond the moon, we're going to go to mars. We all kind of know that on some level, I think actually. So there's an inevitability to human evolution, this being the next step.
→
Related Authors
-
Bill Irwin Actor -
Taraji P. Henson Actress -
Matthew McConaughey Actor -
David S. Goyer Screenwriter -
Michael Crichton Author -
Michael Emerson Film actor -
Jim Caviezel Film actor -
Christian Bale Actor -
Jeffrey Wright Film actor -
Kip Thorne Physicist -
Heath Ledger Actor -
Anthony Hopkins Actor -
Evan Rachel Wood Actress -
Michael Caine Actor -
Ed Harris Actor -
J. J. Abrams Television Producer -
James Marsden Actor -
Jessica Chastain Film actress -
Christopher Nolan Film director -
Thandie Newton Actress