Noah Hawley

“Making 'Fargo' for FX has been the highlight of my career. A writer can search his or her whole career for a network partner who truly understands and encourages their vision. For me, the search is over.”

“Obviously, when you do something with drama and comedy in it - and by that, I mean a scene that has drama and comedy in it - you know the minute you introduce music, you're either scoring the drama or you're scoring the comedy, and therefore the scene becomes either dramatic or comedic.”

“The '50s and the '70s are sort of similar in that they're both times of major paranoia in America.”

“There's a degree to which music bypasses our rational brain and accesses our emotional core in a way that's really visceral and allows you to make a strong impression on people without necessary delivering information.”

“For some reason, I tend to take on the stuff that people are really passionate about. If you make a list of people you don't want to offend, it's Vonnegut readers, comic book fans, and Coen brothers enthusiasts.”

“The danger of writing a so-called thriller is that in your last 100 pages, all of these really interesting characters you've created are just running away from something or toward something, but they're no longer capable of innovation or discovery.”

“The idea was always going to be that each year is a stand-alone story, which did make it easier on some level. It also requires the network to have the creative imagination to say, 'This is also 'Fargo,' you know what I mean?”

“You've got to give an audience something to root for. The minute you get into more dystopian shows, where everything's really dark, and no one has any hope, and there's no positive goal we're working toward, it's a bummer. You run out of gas with them. Because you need to know, 'What am I in this for? What am I rooting for?'”

“There are things we can control and the things we can't control. I can't control how people react to the work I do.”

“I did some feature work, then tried TV. I was always very aware that the only power that you have is the power of options. If the film industry dries up, then you focus on the TV or the books. For me, it was always about what story do I want to tell next?”

“Tension is all about, 'Why is this taking so long?' The interesting thing about that is that it's also the tension of comedy. The tension of drama and comedy is similar, and that's why usually you can get a big laugh in a really tense moment because people need that release.”

“Art exists not inside the piece itself, but inside the mind of the viewer.”

“Everyone always says that conflict is drama, and I agree, but I also don't think you need drama everywhere. Or conflict everywhere.”

“In 'The X-Men' world, one can be a hero one day and a villain the next, which means there's a constant battle for a character's soul that's dynamic. I find that really fascinating.”

“People, they don't know how to bend; they just break.”

“One of the things I love about Joel and Ethan Coen's movies is that there is this element of the ethereal and the mythic that they play with.”

“I would have loved to have been in the room with the ABC executives when they watched David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' TV pilot. You know that had to be a long silence after that thing stopped.”

“We're used to a story in modern terms as an information delivery device. Certainly on television and even with the studio films, there's really only one note that you get, and that's clarity. And people will sacrifice everything for clarity. They'll sacrifice the joke. They'll sacrifice the moment, or the romance.”

“When I sold my first book, 'A Conspiracy of Tall Men,' it was part of a two-book deal. It wasn't hugely lucrative, but it was enough money for me to quit the paralegal job I had in San Francisco.”

“I don't think we have to suffer personally to make great art. If you're prepared and organized, and you know what you're looking for, you can make great art and then go home.”