David Benioff Quotes & Sayings

I have never been much of a patriot. My father would not have allowed such a thing while he lived, and his death insured that his wish was carried out. Piter commanded far more affection and loyalty from me than the nation as a whole. But that night, running across the unplowed fields of winter wheat, with the Fascist invaders behind us and the dark Russian woods before us, I felt a surge of pure love for my country.
We ran for the forest, crashing through the stalks of wheat, beneath the rising moon and the stars spinning farther and farther away, alone beneath the godless sky. — David Benioff

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. — David Benioff

Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you. — David Benioff

Every time something bad happens, like we lose a day because of weather or an actor gets injured or anything else happens, the schedule has to change. It's the most challenging Tetris puzzle. — David Benioff

I'm just not a natural teacher. — David Benioff

Movies that are subtitled don't usually do as well in American theatres. — David Benioff

If we piled them up, they would reach God.' 'But God does not exist, Comrade Farmer.' 'Nor do the potatoes, Comrade Stalin.' " "Old one." "Jokes only get old if they're good. Otherwise, who keeps telling them?" "People like you who aren't funny? — David Benioff

This life came so close to never happening.. — David Benioff

I didn't know if we were heading for the gallows or an interrogation chamber. The night had passed without sleep; save for a swig from the German's flask, there hadn't been a sip to drink since the rooftop of the Kirov; a lump the size of an infant's fist had swelled where my forehead had cracked the ceiling- it was a bad morning, really; among my worst- but I wanted to live. — David Benioff

She was not a writer herself but she was a very good reader, passionate and eclectic in her tastes, and my father had great faith in her judgments. — David Benioff

They have decided nothing can kill them but God himself, and they don't even believe in him.
David Benioff; City of Thieves — David Benioff

There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook. — David Benioff

[Lev Beniov:] The imminence of death did not frighten me as much as it should have. I had been too afraid for too long; I was too exhausted, too hungry, too feel anything with proper intensity. But if my fear had diminished, it was not because my courage had increased. My body was so weak, so spent, that my legs trembled from the effort of standing upright. I could summon no great concern for anything, including the fate of Lev Beniov. — David Benioff

Fiction novels, that's my game. — 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

The lonliest sound in the world is other people making love. — David Benioff

I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own. — David Benioff

He gave me a small, secretive smile, a smile that said he knew many things but couldn't share them all at once. — 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

You're a writer. Make it up. — David Benioff

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. — David Benioff

The longer you work in this business [movie], the more you start to be able to see the carpentry. You can see where things are going, and it's harder to surprise you, as a reader — 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

She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. He mouth was cold, her lips rough from the winter wind, and if the mystics are right and we are doomed to repeat our squalid lives ad infinitum, at least I will always return to that kiss — David Benioff

I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn't help liking a man who despised a fictional character with such passion. — David Benioff

That's our plan? We're going to walk fifty kilometers, right past the Germans, to a poultry collective that maybe didn't get burned down, grab a dozen eggs, and come home?"
"Well, anything would sound ridiculous if said it in that tone of voice."
"Tone of ... I'm asking you a question! — David Benioff

Hollywood screenwriters tend to have the longevity of NFL running backs. So the truth is no one can put more pressure on us than we put on ourselves. — David Benioff

Those words you want to say right now? Don't say them.' He smiled and cuffed my cheek with something close to real affection. 'And that, my friend, is the secret to living a long life'. — David Benioff

Markov's not important,' she said. 'I'm not important. You're not important. Winning the war, that's the only important thing.'
'No,' I said, 'I disagree. Markov was important. So am I and so are you. That's why we have to win. — David Benioff

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. — 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

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.' — David Benioff

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. — David Benioff

If you bill something as a memoir, you're implying that everything in it is true. — David Benioff

Every woman has a dream lover and anightmare lover. The nightmare lover, he just lies on top of her, crushing her with his belly, jabbing his little tool in and out till he's finished. He got his eyes clenched shut, he doesn't say a word; essentially he's just jerking off in the poor girl's pussy. (Kolya Vlasov) — David Benioff

Perhaps a hero is someone who doesn't register his own vulnerability. Is it courage, then, if you're too daft to know you're mortal? — David Benioff

To shoot a decent fight, you need to cover all the different angles, and it ends up eating a lot of days. — David Benioff

I like having my own story remain my story. — David Benioff

Don't worry, my friend. I won't let you die.
I was seventeen and stupid and I believed him. — David Benioff

You don't like the girl. You don't know what color eyes she has, you don't like her. — David Benioff

There's never been a fantasy movie of the epic battle of good versus evil that ended with evil winning. — 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

If this is a dream the whole world is inside it. — David Benioff

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

Once you realise that heroes die, everything becomes that much more terrifying. — David Benioff

This wasn't the way I had imagined my adventures, but reality ignored my wishes from the get-go, giving me a body best suited for stacking books in the library, injecting so much fear into my veins that I could only cower in the stairwell when the violence came. Maybe someday my arms and legs would thicken with muscle and the fear would drain away like dirty bathwater. I wish I believed these things would happen, but I didn't. — 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

The eternal challenge for screenwriter adapters is figuring out how to make something work on screen, when so much of what made it work in the book were the thoughts of the character, and obviously wanting to avoid voiceover. — David Benioff

What Slattery wants is a ring painted on concrete in the empty desert. With no living spectator around for miles, just him and the grinning demons. A chance to fight them each, one by one ... to leave them broken and humbled, or even to lose the fights, but with nobility, and earn the respect of all the men who have showed him none. I want peace, he thinks to himself late at night. I want peace. But then he dreams of fistfights. — David Benioff

Kolya was a braggart, a know-it-all, a Jew-baiting Cossack, but his confidence was so pure and complete it no longer seemed like arrogance, just the mark of a man who had accepted his own heroic destiny. — David Benioff

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. — David Benioff

The man knows he's a target. He's very careful. The'll find the guns.'
Kolya responded with a mournful fart, low and solemn as a single note of a baritone horn. — David Benioff

I've never flown a kite. — David Benioff

Stalin goes to visit one of the collectives outside of Moscow," began Kolya in his joke-telling voice. "Wants to see how they're getting on with the latest Five-Year Plan. 'Tell me, comrade,' he asks one farmer. 'How did the potatoes do this year?' 'Very well, Comrade Stalin. If we piled them up, they would reach God.' 'But God does not exist, Comrade Farmer.' 'Nor do the potatoes, Comrade Stalin. — 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

It smelled like jail ... sore knees and loose assholes. — David Benioff

Contrary to popular belief, the experience of terror does not make you braver. Perhaps though, it is easier to hide your fear when you're afraid all the time. — David Benioff

Kolya rose to a crouch and crept to the front door, keeping his head below the window line. I followed. We kneeled with our backs against the door. Kolya checked his pistol one last time. I pulled the German knife from my ankle sheath. I knew I looked silly holding it, the way a young boy looks holding his father's shaving razor. Kolya grinned at me as though he was about to start laughing. This is all very strange, I thought. I am in the middle of a battle and I am aware of my own thoughts, I am worried about how stupid I look with a knife in my hand while everyone else came to fight with rifles and machine guns. I am aware that I am aware. Even now, with bullets buzzing through the air like angry hornets, I cannot escape the chatter of my brain. — David Benioff

The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening. — David Benioff

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war. — David Benioff

This is good, life must continue, we are fighting barbarians, but we must remain human. — David Benioff

Fear is part of our inheritance.
Lev from City of Thieves — 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

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. — David Benioff

-What's the good news?
-Pardon?
-You said the bad news is we're going the wrong way.
-There isn't any good news. Just because there's bad news doesn't mean there's good news, too. — 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

So many die without our caring, decline to silence in rooms beyond hearing. We honor the dead and abhor the dying.
- from the story De Composition — David Benioff

Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor. — David Benioff

I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. — David Benioff

It's always easiest for me as a writer if I know I have a great ending. It can make everything else work. If you don't have a good ending, it's the hardest things in the world to come up with one. I always loved the ending of 'The Kite Runner,' and the scenes that are most faithful to the book are the last few scenes. — David Benioff

Everyone knew this was the episode that was going to make or break the season. — David Benioff

You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. — 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

Your mother's cunt has a peculiar tubular shape!' he yelled. 'Nonetheless, I tolerate its effluvium and enthusiastically lick its inner folds whenever she demands! — David Benioff

The secret to winning a woman is calculated neglect. — David Benioff

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

I am aware that I am aware — David Benioff

I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of the other minor terrors. How could you fear anything more than death? Everything else offered moments of escape: a paralyzed man could still read Dickens; a man in the grips of dementia might have flashes of the must absurd beauty. — David Benioff

I was cursed with the pessimism of both the Russians and the Jews two of the gloomiest tribes in the world. Still if there wasn't greatness in me maybe I had the talent to recognize it in others even in the most irritating others. — David Benioff

The fire was silent, the little houses collapsing into the flames without complaint, flocks of sparks rising to the sky. At a distance it seemed beautiful, and I thought it was strange that powerful violence is often so pleasing to the eye ... — David Benioff