Seth Grahame-Smith
But if you read Jane Austen, you know that she had a wicked sense of humor. Not only was she funny, but her early writing was very dark and had a gothic tone to it.Collection: Humor
What makes a good book and what makes a good movie are totally different things.
If you're Stephen King and you have a massive body of huge-selling well-respected work, you can pivot and do whatever you want. I don't have that body of work, I don't have that audience that's comfortable with me enough yet to follow my bliss with me.
Abraham Lincoln comes from nothing, has no education, no money, lives in the middle of nowhere on the frontier. And despite the fact that he suffers one tragedy and one setback after another, through sheer force of will, he becomes something extraordinary: not only the president but the person who almost single-handedly united the country.
It was this weird confrontation of these two delicious flavors that got me consciously or subconsciously combining Lincoln and vampires as an observational in-joke with myself.
I understand exactly what I am.
I'm a big, bombastic novelist and thrill-ride guy. I'm never going to win the National Book Award.
I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature.
So I grew up in a very book-friendly environment and my education as a writer was reading. I think that's the best education. Reading, and taking from the people I admired.
My job on 'Dark Shadows' was to make it fun and funny, first and foremost. It can still be dark and it can still even be gory and gothic at times, but it also needed to be fun and it needed to be an experience that people would enjoy having.
I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet. But, I literally work all day, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and that's not an exaggeration.
I've been a lifelong horror fan, but at the same time, I would say 90 percent of my reading is biographies and nonfiction history.
I've always enjoyed reading history, particularly presidential biographies.
I think any period in history can be adapted into interesting fiction, as long as you approach the actual history with respect.
I think zombies have always been an easy metaphor for hard times. Because they're this big, faceless, brainless group of evil things that will work tirelessly to destroy you and think of nothing else.
Sometimes we see the Civil War in movies and imagine these neatly aligned rows of men with muskets, walking in line to shoot each other. In reality the things that fascinated me were how absolutely ruthless and violent so many engagements were, how much suffering and how men were not prepared.
If a novelist has created vivid characters, interesting relationships, settings the reader can easily imagine, and intriguing stories, a screenwriter has loads to work with. The challenge comes with deciding what to cut and what to keep.
Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore.
If a movie has more characters than an audience can keep track of, the audience will get confused and lose interest in the story.
Movie characters rarely get to think out loud or talk very much about their emotions. Instead they have to, very briefly, show their feelings through their action or through dialog.
'Pride and Prejudice' - perhaps more than any other Jane Austen book - is engrained in our literary consciousness.
I always say that the characters in Jane Austen's original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what's going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others.
I like my zombies slow and I like my zombies stupid.
I want to be judged harshly because that forces me to really sit down and focus.
There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it - mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction - I don't know if I want to do that anymore.
If you write really good material, the rest just falls into place. There's really no trick to it.
It's absurd to think of 'Pride and Prejudice,' this classic, beloved book, beset with a zombie uprising. The goal is to make you suspend your disbelief enough to allow you to get lost in the story and believe what you're reading for a while.
My day job is making TV shows.
Real power... comes not from hate, but from truth.Collection: Hate
Contrary to his infallibly "honest" image, Abe wasn't above lying so long as it served a noble purpose.Collection: Lying
Of all the weapons in the world, love is the most dangerous.Collection: Love Is
It was a really strange and unique sort of process for me to adapt my own book.Collection: Book
I fear that a life of death has made me numb to both.Collection: Numb
Of all the weapons she had commanded, Elizabeth knew the least of love; and of all the weapons in the world, love was the most dangerous.Collection: World Love
Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do; for I shall not have my best warrior resigned to the service of a man who is fatter than Buddha and duller than the edge of a learning sword.Collection: Mother
I dare say she means to keep you from his attentions. Your honour demands she be slain.Collection: Mean
There are but two types of men who desire war: those who haven’t the slightest intention of fighting it themselves, and those who haven’t the slightest idea what it is. … Any man who has seen the face of death knows better than to seek him out a second time.Collection: War
I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all mean are created free and equal.Collection: Mean
Living men are bound by time... Thus, their lives have an urgency. This gives them ambition. Makes them choose those things that are most important, cling more tightly to that which they hold dear. Their lives have seasons, and rites of passage, and consequences. And ultimately, an end. But what of a life with no urgency? What then of ambition? What then of love?Collection: Love
He begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its cookery was owing. Briefly forgetting her manners, Mary grabbed her fork and leapt from her chair onto the table. Lydia, who was seated nearest her, grabbed her ankle before she could dive at Mr. Collins and, presumably, stab him about the head and neck for such an insult.Collection: Cousin
Miss Bennet, I am quite aware of your superior talent for cutting down the Lord's forsaken flock. I merely mean to spare your gown.' Thank you,' said Elizabeth, composing herself, 'but I should rather my gown be soiled than my honor.Collection: Mean
Thank you, sir, but I am perfectly content being the bride of death.Collection: Brides
Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail, such flourish, that afterwards a man could swear it had been his own memory, and not a tale at all.Collection: Memories
All I ask is that my final months be happy ones, and that I be permitted a husband who will see to my proper Christian beheading and burial.Collection: Christian
An accomplished woman is one who has a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing and the modern languages; she must be well trained in the fighting styles of the Kyoto masters and the modern tactics and weaponry of Europe.Collection: Fighting
put the car in "d" set the compass to "n" and get the "f"out of thereCollection: Car
Some people say "if we split up,we can cover more ground"-with bloodCollection: Blood
Elizabeth sheathed her sword, knelt behind him, and strangled him to death with his own large bowel.Collection: Behinds
The business of Mr. Bennett's life was to keep his daughters alive. The business of Mrs. Bennett's was to get them married.Collection: Daughter
I would much prefer their minds to be engaged in the deadly arts than clouded with dreams of marriage and fortune, as your own so clearly is!Collection: Dream