Mark Waters Quotes

Daydreaming allows you to play out scenarios where you miraculously save the day. You play out scenarios in your head that are kind of crazy, and then you personally, heroically resolve them.

I've read the whole 'Divergent' series, the 'Pretty' series. I just read it because I find this stuff interesting to read.

My first inkling that I might have a yen for directing came when I realized I enjoyed creating plays for my various sports teams more than I actually liked playing the game.

I read things and imagine them and then kind of start trying to kind of take what I imagine and make it visual for everybody else to see. It just happens to be my personal vision, and every person's is going to be different, every book reader.

People need to be given enough so that they feel like they're not missing something. There's a thing that you have when you watch a movie where, if you feel like you're not following and you're going to get tested on it later, you're going to get disengaged. So, you have to give people just enough information, so that they're able to keep up with the story.

In college, I stopped doing pre-med and went into theater, and then I moved to San Francisco and lived there for five years.

I find women much more interesting than dudes.

If you look at the least effective of the 'Twilight' movies, it was when they brought in an action-movie director instead of a director who was really a good storyteller. And you can tell the difference.

Frankenstein's actually interesting; he's kind of like a zombie.

The one thing about 'Beautiful Creatures,' 'The Host' and 'The Mortal Instruments,' which are all well-made movies, is that they were all infected with a dreadful sincerity.

I can tell you that from the director's chair, young actors love to be challenged, to be given killer lines that take time to wrap their mind around.

It's all just a bit of fun ...

When I'm directing actors, I often find myself slipping in sports metaphors, like: 'Don't go for the punch line here, just put it up on a T-ball stand so she can hit it out of the park.'

Usually, like, on 'Mean Girls,' the task that Tina Fey and I set for ourselves was we wanted to maintain a comic intensity throughout the movie, where people just don't really get a break from laughing. And if they do, it's for a brief emotional scene, and then we're going to once again try to knock them on their heels again with comedy.

Drama is played at the pace of chess ... or billiards ... or poker. Engrossing? Sure. But comedy is played at the jubilant, high-octane speed of sports like basketball or hockey.

A lot of first-time filmmakers are almost apologizing for their movie by saying, 'Well, we only had 18 days to shoot, you know.'