William Monahan

Casting is always subject to availabilities.

— William Monahan

Dialogue is used to reveal not what we want to say, but what we are trying to hide.

— William Monahan

You don't write for actors. Actors come for characters you've made up.

— William Monahan

I'm not very precious at all, which I think people find surprising.

— William Monahan

I sound like Warhol but only because I'm tired.

— William Monahan

Casting is all about availability, as much as anything else.

— William Monahan

For some reason, I seem to work well with actors. I love working with them.

— William Monahan

I think probably everybody works most on the beginning and the ending.

— William Monahan

As a director, you're given a tremendous apparatus to work with, and very great talents are available to you.

— William Monahan

On historical you take the known facts, dramatize them, and then stitch them together by invention. It's a projective thing.

— William Monahan

Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

— William Monahan

Without English art, I never would have understood myself, my own family, or the New England world I lived in.

— William Monahan

If you decide to do Hamlet in a funny hat staged in a ruined factory, it doesn't make you Shakespeare.

— William Monahan

I don't think you need $35 million bucks to make a movie. I think what people should do is make a lot…

— William Monahan

It's interesting to think that my children know more about the process than many mature critics.

— William Monahan

Get Carter is a classic, but it did nothing in the United States. It came out on a double bill with a…

— William Monahan

But the web is to some degree a broth of psychopaths seeing what they can get away with in circumstances of anonymity.…

— William Monahan

If TV seems improved, I think it's been enhanced by violence and sex permissible on cable, as well as better cinematography, but…

— William Monahan

For me, film has been good because I'm able to work at top crack, working at something I love to do, in…

— William Monahan

There were days when you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald. Video was out, but nobody could…

— William Monahan

In truth, the cinema as a delivery system obviously has its days numbered. And that's not a bad thing. When you can…

— William Monahan

I went into directing having observed and learned from the best. There was a certain standard of procedure. I found that I…

— William Monahan

Certainly some guy eating cardboard in Cincinnati has lost any ordinary impetus to review your novel decently if he's just read you…

— William Monahan

As far as executing work is concerned, you do it all in order. You do it in contractual order. There's no overlap,…

— William Monahan

It's been very much in the blood since I started imagining films or shooting with 8mm when I was a kid. I…

— William Monahan

I'm in the film industry, and I very seldom go to the theater now. It could be work, not being in New…

— William Monahan

“I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called…

— William Monahan

I didn't have anything to do with selecting IFC. I don't have anything to do with distribution, or business, or marketing, but…

— William Monahan

The first time I ever thought about doing a film seriously, I was in London. I was about 17 years old. I…

— William Monahan

That's absolutely true, but one problem with the digital revolution, which may tie into what I said earlier, is that there can…

— William Monahan

I'm a huge fan of director's cuts or reassemblies if they're good, but I remember being really excited about the restored version…

— William Monahan

I have a library room with four desks in it. On one of them is a spec, on one of them is…

— William Monahan

If you see, as I do, in edited film, you're going to end up as a director.

— William Monahan

In all honesty a gangster picture was the easiest kind of film for me to get made.

— William Monahan

I'm interested in stories about human beings. I don't care where or when they are set.

— William Monahan

You never know what people are going to go and see.

— William Monahan

I never write with particular actors in mind.

— William Monahan

The only answer to "Are you Beatles or Stones?" is, "I'm both."

— William Monahan

Getting the correct writer is simply like casting. You wouldn't hire an actor in order to tell him how to work. He…

— William Monahan

You can believe in originals only if you just don't know their context within literature. Certainly I believe in originality, but it…

— William Monahan