Top 30 David Benioff Quotes

Sometimes I get jealous when I’m reading a great book by a younger writer. But ‘White Tiger’ is so good, I almost forgot to hate Aravind Adiga.

Movies that are subtitled don’t usually do as well in American theatres.

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

Just the notion of falling for someone, that involves weakness.

The reality is, ‘Game of Thrones’ has been a successful show for HBO, which has put us in a position to come and pitch another show and get them excited about it. And that’s what helped get us here.

Simon Critchley’s ‘The Book of Dead Philosophers’ – it’s a quick thumbnail sketches of philosophers through the ages.

Fiction novels, that’s my game.

I can’t measure up to Homer. His composition has survived for nearly three millennia and remains the world’s most beautiful and mournful depiction of war. But the story of the Trojan War does not belong to Homer. The characters he employs were legendary long before he was born.

‘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.

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.

I don’t like extremely long movies. I tend to get a bit impatient. There are definitely exceptions, like ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ but for the most part, I feel that movies should usually be shorter and not longer.

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.

For every Book of Job, there’s a Book of Leviticus, featuring some of the most boring prose ever written. But if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would better reward long study? And has there ever been a more beautiful distillation of existential philosophy than the Book of Ecclesiastes?

I like having my own story remain my story.

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.

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

We have a ‘bad movie’ club, and we go to whatever dumb movie is playing in the local theater, then go and have some beers and dinner.

I’m just not a natural teacher.

I don’t type my sentences on an arena’s pitch, surrounded by thousands of cheering or booing fans – I don’t feel pressure to please a crowd.

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

With screenplays, it’s all about being as concise as possible. If you have a scene that’s set in a bar, you just have to write, ‘Interior: Bar.’

I love reading novels, and I love going to movies, but I kind of hate going to an adaptation of a novel, and it starts off with a voiceover.

You just do the best you can and hope people see the potential in it.

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.

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.

‘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.

If you’re writing a screenplay for a feature, you don’t have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.

We have amazing stunt performers and in Miguel Sapochnik, a director who’s so good at spending hours and hours and hours on every shot beforehand, so that he knows exactly what he wants when he gets to the battlefield on the day. We only shoot ten-hour days, so you have to pack a lot into those ten hours.

We always talk about how the first several seasons were faithful to the books, and anybody who wanted to could go onto Wikipedia and learn Ned Stark gets beheaded or about The Red Wedding, and most people don’t want to know – because why ruin a story?

I’ve never flown a kite.