Best 76 quotes of Steven Knight on MyQuotes

[2015] it's a time that there's a clash of ideologies, similar to the Cold War. I think that a story like this has been waiting to be told, and I think it's a fresh look at the whole earth-shattering business of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it.

A creative person can suddenly realize it's not 90 minutes. They haven't got to do three acts, they haven't got to do the arc, but they can do other things. I think just as novellas turned into novels, I think that television series can begin to have that depth.

[Allied] got the attention of (director) Bob Zemeckis and Marion Cotillard. I'm glad I waited. If it had been made 15 years before, who knows how it would have looked, but it's got the best possible cast, director and everything. It's been fantastic. It was worth waiting.

[Allied] meant to be a film that's a bit different. It's roots are in the '40s and '50s, and that sort of filmmaking style.

East India Company were a huge multinational that had the added impetus that they felt they were spreading Christian civilization around the world - so they were pretty free to do anything they wanted.

East India Company weren't an evil organization that went around deliberately oppressing people, but they were driven by profit, and how familiar is that now?

I always thought it would never happen. And then, it became possible. In between commissions, I wrote it as an original screenplay [Allied].

I am someone who thinks that if you've got an actor like that who wants to perform your work, then you should do it, and hopefully Tom [Hardey] likes to do the work that I do, so long may it continue.

I didn't direct [the Taboo episodes]. I wrote all of them.

I don't think that jealousy and love and hate and anger and all those things have changed in the past 200 years - people just express themselves differently.

I find the best way to make things real is to just put two characters into a space and let them talk to each other in the way that they would talk to each other, and then see what they would say. I know it sounds weird, but that leads the plot and takes you in another direction.

I like to create a character where you believe, deep down, that they don't really care if they live or die. That's very liberating for the character because, if the character is prepared to die, then they can do anything. It's impossible to stop them.

I love cooking and kitchens.It's just a great world, and I wanted to explore it. You see the façade, the outside, the public part, and then you just walk through one door marked "Staff Only" and you're in a different universe.

I'm always interested in characters who are closed down, but who open up when they choose to, rather than when they're obliged to. I think that's a very appealing thing, for an audience and just in life. I like the idea that something will say nothing, and then get straight to the point. That feels like how your heroes should be.

I'm not suggesting that ours [series] is unique in that, but they can begin to have that depth, that gravity, they can spend some time, so it's a bit more like reading a good novel, if you like.

I must have been about 11 when I read the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which I read, over and over again.

I'm very, very excited because I'm just completing Episode 6 of Series 4 [of Peaky Blinders], which again I think is the best yet. And I'm loving it and it's not like work, it's not like a labor, I love doing it, and the boys are coming back and they're loving the scripts.

In other words, when you have someone [like Ridley Scott] with that authority, then you tend to be left alone. But they were good and they're really good people, and I'm a big champion of the BBC and I think that like minds find each other and I think that FX and BBC is a perfect match.

In terms of how [Allied] looks, it's fantastic and much better than I had hoped because it's so lush and so beautifully executed.

I read more and more and I came across this character, Caroline Weldon. Sometimes in history, you find these people that no one would dare create. They're too mad.

I spoke to Tom's [Hardy] manager and said, "While we're talking about Taboo, do you mind if I also mention this film project that I've got, which is called Locke, and I need Tom to play the lead." And we spoke about both in that meeting and in the end the deal was that I would do Taboo if he did Locke and vice versa.

It felt [at the Allied set] like, "At last, I'm in Hollywood," even though I was in West London. It was like, "This is how a film should be made." It was beautiful.

It has to be an actress like Marion Cotillard [in Allied] because there are so many levels to it. It's set in the Second World War, when lots of people were doing things that, outside of a war, you wouldn't do, like killing and dropping bombs. She's doing things that one wouldn't approve of, but it's war.

I think certain periods of history don't get dealt with because I think historians, and it's their job, but they look back and look for patterns. They look for sequences and they look for reasons, and certain periods of history don't fit with the general pattern of 1500 to the 20th century, during which there's the creation of the United States. At this time of 1814, two nations who would eventually become close allies were at war with each other, so it doesn't quite fit.

I think it creates so many more opportunities and pitfalls in that you are treading on fresh snow, so you're in a new place.

I think once those friendships, if you use that as an analogy, the friendships between the audience and the character is established, then you can start to take liberties. I believe that as this unfolds people will find the time invested worthwhile.

I think people are drawn to characters that break the rules. I think there is something about a good person doing bad things for what they consider to be a good reason. Then the battle is on to almost prove to the audience that it's justified. How far can you go with that? How far can that character go before people won't accept it? Trying to walk to edge of that line is a challenge.

I think that helps because there has been no formality of friendship, the politeness of friendship, so we can just work directly on the work that's ahead of us [with Tom Hardey].

I think that it's not a bad thing to not be too versed in the vocabulary of cinema, because you start to think that certain things are allowed and not allowed.

I think the East India Company represents what we would think of as a very modern approach to the world where everything was counted, every penny was counted.

It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there.

It's great that the story [Allied] is set in the '40s because the '40s feel to it is completely appropriate.

It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.

It was great fun to do because of the central character. With The Girl in the Spider's Web, the girl is really the central character. She's the whole thing.

I've been writing so much. And what happens with TV is that they split [Taboo] into two blocks, so you get a director that does four and another director that does another four. You commit yourself to seven days a week, for 12 or 13 hour days for a long time. I couldn't really do that.

I've spent three hours with Snoop Dogg, talking about how he loved [Peaky Blinders series]. And David Bowie loved it. The late Leonard Cohen was a fan. It struck a chord with various people that I didn't think it would.

I visited the set [of Allied] a few times, and it was a great set to visit. A lot of it was in West London, in an old Gillette factory. You'd go into the factory through the security, and then there were a lot of camels and goats. Most sets are really dull, but this was fantastic.

I wanted to take a damaged individual in a damaged society with damaged relationships between nations and take a look at how this individual survives amongst them, and that for me as a writer is the connection that you needed to get inside the skin of the main character and wonder how he's going to cope with all this.

I was 21, when I heard the story that inspired this [thriller Allied], and I wasn't even a screenwriter then.

I wouldn't put myself in that bracket, but it's one of those things. I think what helps is that we [with Tom Hardey] don't socialize, we don't really know each other, we purely work together.

James Delaney as an individual is sort of like a grain of sand in an oyster who is irritating all of them. But for me he's a creature of the time, like the industrialists who started the Industrial Revolution who extricated themselves from their class and their background

Just the idea that someone is married and they've got a kid, and he reports for work one morning and his boss says, "You're wife is a spy. Shoot her." In the real story, he just went back and did it, which would have been a short film. Therefore, I had to spend some time exploring what you would do.

No screenplay is possible, unless you get some attachment from somebody who's going to get it made.

Obviously, television is a writer's medium, so you get a lot more power and authority. With a film, the discipline is having a beginning, middle and end, and having it work in a specific space of time.

Snoop [Dog] said [Peaky Blinders] reminded him of how he got involved with gang culture. It's always fantastically flattering when I see people dress like that and take on the look.

Sometimes if you're a director, you want to believe that you're great and capable at all aspects - the technical side, the lights, everything - but I'm not.

Sometimes you take something because it's an offer and it's big and it's good money and you have to absolutely respect that process, because it's not easier.

Suddenly, after years of television being the poor relation and film being everything, it now feels like film is a conjuring trick. It's like, "Oh, my god, how are you going to do that in 90 minutes, as opposed to eight hours?! I've got so little time to do this!" It becomes an art form, in itself. Doing both helps you do each one.

[Taboo] has been exactly the same as working with the BBC in that creatively they do that precious thing which is to only make a comment when a comment needs to be made.