People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance.

M. Night Shyamalan

Categorized in : People Two Numbers

You don't get to celebrate yourself unless you risk being mocked or rejected. As an artist, you cannot play it safe. You just can't.

M. Night Shyamalan

risk artist play

Giving should be a part of your routine, just like working out, eating, and sleeping.

M. Night Shyamalan

work-out sleep giving

When you say fear of the unknown, that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and its genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because were not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.

M. Night Shyamalan

woods definitions safe

I try to take B genre movies and treat them as if they're A dramas. Get the cinematographers, get the actors to do an A drama, but it just happens to be about aliens or ghosts or crazy people, or killers, or whatever it is.

M. Night Shyamalan

crazy drama people

Is it possible that there are no coincidences?

M. Night Shyamalan

coincidence

My biggest fear in life is to be average.

M. Night Shyamalan

biggest-fear life-is average

I find it very eerie when somebody is being really polite.

M. Night Shyamalan

polite being-real eerie

When I was a kid, I had two great guilty pleasures. One was horror movies and the other was martial arts movies.

M. Night Shyamalan

two kids art

For instance, The Sixth Sense had mediocre to bad reviews. Slowly, the audience pushed it and it received critical attention.

M. Night Shyamalan

reviews mediocre attention

Sometimes we do not do things that we wish to do, so others will not know that we wish to do them.

M. Night Shyamalan

wish knows sometimes

I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself.

M. Night Shyamalan

halloween scare writing

There are scenes that were right on the edge, but I always try to err on non-indulgence. It's something that I'm very careful about, that I'm just leaning too hard into something.

M. Night Shyamalan

careful scene trying

Sometimes people can write really great scenes and even a great episode, but they can't see the bigger picture.

M. Night Shyamalan

writing sometimes people

There are a lot of things I can take, and a few that I can't. What I can't take is when my older brother, who's everything that I want to be, starts losing faith in things. I saw that look in your eyes last night. I don't ever want to see that look in your eyes again.

M. Night Shyamalan

eye brother faith

When you find your voice, your life takes on grace.

M. Night Shyamalan

voice grace

A TV show where all of the characters are trying to figure out what's going on, and the suspense of that, fits my [voice] really well. You feel their frustration, anger and fear, and then, when the reveal happens, their sense of dread or horror, or whatever it is, and I like to paint with those colors.

M. Night Shyamalan

frustration color character

The beauty of the world of Unbreakable is that you're playing it for reality. It should never feel like a comic book movie. It feels like a straight-up drama. It's real. You're confronting the possibility that comic book characters were based on people that were real.

M. Night Shyamalan

real drama book

Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters.

M. Night Shyamalan

movie people art

My grandparents were classic Indian grandparents. My grandmother would put so much powder on her face that it was like a Kabuki play and she'd come down the stairs. I was like 8 or 9 years old. My grandfather apparently had no teeth because he would take out his teeth and put them in a glass, and then he would try to scare me with it. I started to try to scare them when I was a little older.

M. Night Shyamalan

grandmother play years

I'm so from the Woody Allen/Spike Lee school.

M. Night Shyamalan

woody school