David Benioff Quotes

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David Benioff

Profession : Novelist

Birth : September 25, 1970

I'm just not a natural teacher.

David Benioff

But in a 24-hour day, the 25th hour is also the impossible hour, an hour that doesn't exist, that can only be created by the imagination.

David Benioff

Some of my happiest childhood memories are going to the movies with my dad and seeing whatever was out that week. In 1977, when I was 7, it was 'Star Wars.' That was a life-changer.

David Benioff

I've never flown a kite.

David Benioff

McCullers is one of those rare writers who remembers what childhood is like. Not incidents, which anyone can recall, but states of mind, which are so difficult to recreate.

David Benioff

Iwan Rheon is a great actor, and he's going to go on to a long brilliant career. And most of the characters he'll play will not be evil. He's not one of those who can only play a bad guy.

David Benioff

A certain luxury when you get to writing a novel is to have the space to have your characters just banter.

David Benioff

'Game Of Thrones' was too big a canvas for a movie, but 'Dirty White Boys' is like a great old Western: there's so much compression, and it's so pressurized, it demands to be told in one sitting.

David Benioff

It would be far less interesting, after 'The Empire Strikes Back,' to have an hour-long movie in between 'Empire' and 'Return of the Jedi,' where Luke is training. It's so much cooler to cut from end of 'Empire' to beginning of 'Return,' where he's become the Jedi.

David Benioff

I think, in a weird way, the reason I was drawn to screenwriting and the reason I really love doing it is because I love writing dialogue.

David Benioff

'The 25th Hour' came out of the decision - a really very conscious decision - that I needed a story set within a compressed time frame because that would help focus the story.

David Benioff

Fiction novels, that's my game.

David Benioff

'Troy' is an adaptation of the Trojan War myth in its entirety, not 'The Iliad' alone. 'The Iliad' begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over the slave girl Briseis nine years into the war. The equivalent scene occurs halfway through my script.

David Benioff

My favorite food in the world is hard shell crabs from Maryland.

David Benioff

Despite his dodgy politics, Yeats remains an inspiration for his genius and the simple fact that the older he got, the better he wrote.

David Benioff

I was a huge fantasy geek growing up. I was the dungeon master in my D&D game.

David Benioff

Every adaptation requires that the screenwriter make difficult choices - and in particular, difficult cuts.

David Benioff

It is actually a lot harder to sit down and write from A to Z. But for me at least, it's the only way I can do it, at this point, with any moderate success.

David Benioff

And I didn't grow up wanting to be a director. I grew up wanting to be a writer, so for me, that was always the goal - to be a novelist, not a screenwriter. And I think, again, if I didn't have the novels, maybe I'd be much more frustrated by not having directed yet.

David Benioff

With the movies, people are not going to wait around. The deadline is a deadline. In publishing it's more a polite suggestion.

David Benioff