Explore Quotes by David Benioff

Simon Critchley's 'The Book of Dead Philosophers' - it's a quick thumbnail sketches of philosophers through the ages.

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.

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.

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.

You just do the best you can and hope people see the potential in it.

We have amazing stunt performers and in Miguel Sapochnik, a director who's so good at spending hours and hours and hours on every shot beforehand, so that he knows exactly what he wants when he gets to the battlefield on the day. We only shoot ten-hour days, so you have to pack a lot into those ten hours.

Despite his dodgy politics, Yeats remains an inspiration for his genius and the simple fact that the older he got, the better he wrote.

It's crazy enough to be the person crawling through the bushes in Northern Ireland with a telescopic lens taking pictures - there are crazy people out there. But the idea that people want to go to sites and find out those spoilers... it's like if there was a website called Last Pages of Great Books, would you read that?

'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.

Iwan Rheon is a great actor, and he's going to go on to a long brilliant career. And most of the characters he'll play will not be evil. He's not one of those who can only play a bad guy.

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.

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.

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

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.

'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.

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

A certain luxury when you get to writing a novel is to have the space to have your characters just banter.

I've never flown a kite.

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

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

The secret to winning a woman is calculated neglect.