Tom McCarthy Quotes & Sayings

Satin Island, like all books, contains hundreds of borrowings, echoes, remixes and straight repetitions. To list them all would take up as much space as the text itself. The critical reader can entertain him- or herself tracking some of them down, if he or she is that way inclined. — Tom McCarthy

You all want to be the hero in the film who runs away in slo-mo from the villain's factory that he's just mined, throwing himself to the ground as it explodes. But the explosion's taking place already - it's always been taking place. You just didn't notice ... — Tom McCarthy

It was such a joy to be an actor on 'The Wire.' — Tom McCarthy

Ben Karlin is a friend of mine and was a writer on 'The Daily Show.' He's just put out a book and asked a bunch of writers from various disciplines to contribute. It was called 'Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me,' and of course I agreed, and then I actually had to sit down and write it. God, writing fiction is terrifying. — Tom McCarthy

All great enterprises are about logistics. Not genius or inspiration or flights of imagination, skill or cunning, but logistics. — Tom McCarthy

With docs, there's often a very direct communication between the filmmaker and the audience. With narrative movies, we leave it a little bit more open. — Tom McCarthy

Forget family, or ethnic and religious groupings: corporations have supplanted all these as the primary structure of the modern tribe. — Tom McCarthy

I loved acting, and then acting led to writing, and writing led to directing, and directing lead to five movies, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. — Tom McCarthy

There's a bit more of a safe distance when you're making a narrative movie, a bit more perspective. Audiences can separate themselves from the harsh reality of the facts a little bit more and think: 'Okay, how do I consider this?' — Tom McCarthy

I think when you're dealing with faith, you want to be as responsible and sensitive to the material as you can. — Tom McCarthy

[ ... ]to be real
to become fluent, natural, to cut out the detour that sweeps us around what's fundamental to events, preventing us from touching their core: the detour that makes us all second-hand and second-rate. — Tom McCarthy

For anthropologists, even the exotic's not exotic, let alone the everyday. — Tom McCarthy

A lot of times, I'll resist the temptation to visually define a movie until, one, I really understand just what the movie's about, and two, until I start talking to my cinematographer. — Tom McCarthy

The passion and knowledge of journalism as storytelling is incredibly infectious. — Tom McCarthy

Some people shy around 'The Cobbler.' 'The Cobbler' will always be a very special film to me. I've had a lot of wonderful response from 'The Cobbler.' — Tom McCarthy

People need foundation myths, some imprint of year zero, a bolt that secures the scaffolding that in turn holds fast the entire architecture of reality, of time: memory-chambers and oblivion-cellars, walls between eras, hallways that sweep us on towards the end-days and the coming whatever-it-is. We see things shroudedly, as through a veil, an over-pixellated screen. When the shapeless plasma takes on form and resolution, like a fish approaching us through murky waters or an image looming into view from noxious liquid in a darkroom, when it begins to coalesce into a figure that's discernible, if ciphered, we can say: This is it, stirring, looming even if it isn't really, if it's all just ink-blots. — Tom McCarthy

Ultimately, as an actor, it comes down to committing to the text in the script. — Tom McCarthy

Whenever you're telling a story about true-life events and about real people, there's a tremendous responsibility-slash-burden to get it right. — Tom McCarthy

Guns aren't just history's props and agents: they're history itself, spinning alternate futures in their chamber, hurling the present from their barrel, casting aside the empty shells of past — Tom McCarthy

I'm a pretty well-read person. I read my paper every morning. — Tom McCarthy

People need foundation myths. — Tom McCarthy

Taking chances is my job; some will connect and some won't, and certain films find their audiences in different ways. I think 'Spotlight' probably is a better movie because of 'The Cobbler.' You learn with every movie you make: you learn from your mistakes, and you learn from your achievements, and I really do have that approach to filmmaking. — Tom McCarthy

Literature has to remain frustrating - to withhold something, remain incomplete - or it's not literature anymore, but rather entertainment, edification or interpretation. That's literature's USP: staying unresolved, keeping its most vital messages unspoken, creating a zone of noise where everything and nothing is said at the same time. — Tom McCarthy

If people were to tell other people everything about themselves, we'd live in a dull world. — Tom McCarthy

To the anthropologist, as I explained before, it's generic episodes and phenomena that stand out as significant, not singular ones. To the anthropologist, there's no such thing as a singular episode, a singular phenomenon - only a set of variations on generic ones; the more generic, therefore, the more pure, the closer to an unvariegated or unscrambled archetype. — Tom McCarthy

We require experience to stay ahead, if only by a nose, of our consciousness of experience - if for no other reason than that the latter needs to make sense of the former, to (as Peyman would say) narrate it both to others and ourselves, and, for this purpose, has to be fed with a constant, unsorted supply of fresh sensations and events. — Tom McCarthy

Well, he replied, finally letting my hand go so that he could gesticulate with his; you don your khakis, schlep off to some jungle, hang out with the natives, fish and hunt with them, shiver from their fevers, drink strange brew fermented in their virgins' mouths, and all the rest; then, after about a year, they lug your bales and cases down to the small jetty that connects their tiny world to the big one that they kind of know exists, but only as an abstract concept, like adultery for children; and, waving with big, gap-toothed smiles, they send you back to your study - where, khakis swapped for cotton shirt and tie, saliva-liquor for the Twinings, tisane or iced Scotch your housekeeper purveys you on a tray, you write the book: that's what I mean, he said. Not just a book: the fucking Book. You write the Book on them. Sum their tribe up. Speak its secret name. — Tom McCarthy

Everything becomes buffering, and buffering becomes everything. — Tom McCarthy

We're the noblest savages of all. — Tom McCarthy

Surplus matter. I'd forgotten all about that phrase, those classes
even before the accident, I mean. After the accident I forgot everything. It was as though my memories were pigeons and the accident a big noise that had scared them off. They fluttered back eventually
but when they did, their hierarchy had changed, and some that had had crappy places before ended up with better ones; I remembered them more clearly; they seemed more important. — Tom McCarthy

It's about the possibility, or otherwise, of meaning in the world. And the possibility, or otherwise, of writing. And the possibility, or otherwise, of the resolution of everything into some coherent, cogent vision. — Tom McCarthy

I stopped right in the middle of the road. There was no traffic. Before heading back towards my flat to get the number I paused for a while, I don't know how long, and stood in what had been the marksmen's sightlines. I turned the palms of my hands outwards, closed my eyes and thought about that memory of just before the accident, being buffeted by wind. Remembering it sent a tingling from the top of my legs to my shoulders and right up into my neck. It lasted for just a moment-but while it did it felt not-neutral. I felt different, intense: both intense and serene at the same time. I remember feeling this way very well: standing there, passive, with my palms turned outwards, feeling intense and serene. — Tom McCarthy

It's very fluid, this space between philosophy and literature, and that's something that resonates for me. — Tom McCarthy

It's not that I'm being shy. It's just that
well, for one, I don't even remember the event. It's a blank: a white slate, a black hole. I have vague images, half-impressions: of being, or having been
or, more precisely, being about to be
hit; blue light; railings; lights of other colours; being held above some kind of tray or bed. But who's to say that these are genuine memories? Who's to say my traumatized mind didn't just make them up, or pull them out from somewhere else, some other slot, and stick them there to plug the gap
the crater
that the accident had blown? Minds are versatile and wily things. Real chancers. — Tom McCarthy

I just try to keep going and work on projects that are exciting to me, with people I respect and enjoy and want to work with. That takes me in different directions sometimes, but it's all been a pretty good ride. — Tom McCarthy