67+ Robert McKee Quotes On Education, Adaptation And Story

Robert McKee is an American author, lecturer, story consultant, and teacher. He is the author of the popular book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, which has sold over 500,000 copies and is popular among screenwriters, directors, producers, and other Hollywood professionals. He has lectured in over 60 countries, and has taught over 65,000 students in his acclaimed Story Seminar. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Robert McKee on life, leadership, education.

Top 10 Robert McKee Quotes

1. Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.
2. All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.
3. Life is chaotic and meaningless, and you have to find your meaning. You must find the answer, you can't just live. That's the point of story: helping you find your meaning in life.
4. Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.
5. Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.
6. God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.
7. Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.
8. A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.
9. Stories are the currency of human relationships.
10. In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

Robert McKee Short Quotes

• The mark of a master is to select only a few moments, but give us a lifetime.
• Talent without craft is like fuel without an engine, it burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.
• Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.
• Never sleep with anybody who has more problems than you do.
• Oh, by the way, I tend to use a lot of profanities. I do that for a reason: I like it.
• Classical design is a mirror of the human mind. It's how we see the world.
• Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality.
• We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.
• To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.
• In comedy laughter settles all arguments.

Robert McKee Quotes About Life

Don't be didactic - don't write about poverty. Write about poor people. When you dramatize their lives and let life and characters be your inspiration, you will express the 'idea' dynamically and without preaching. — Robert McKee

The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect. — Robert McKee

The material of literary talent is words; the material of story talent is life itself. — Robert McKee

Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time. — Robert McKee

Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower. — Robert McKee

In life two negatives don't make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse. — Robert McKee

Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie. — Robert McKee

We often put off doing something for as long as possible, then as we finally make the decision and step into the action, we're surprised by its relative ease. We're left to wonder why we dreaded it until we realize that most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower. — Robert McKee

The students realize that it's their life I'm talking about: it's out of balance, they're struggling to put it into balance. How are they going to do it? — Robert McKee

Robert McKee Quotes About Story

A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society. — Robert McKee

Stories build cultures by answering the big questions. — Robert McKee

The universal erosion of values has lead to the universal erosion of story. — Robert McKee

Story is about originality, not duplication — Robert McKee

If you can't play all the instruments in the orchestra of story, no matter what music may be in your imagination, you're condemned to hum the same old tune. — Robert McKee

What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens. — Robert McKee

Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told. — Robert McKee

Leaders use story to author the future. — Robert McKee

Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points. — Robert McKee

To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories. — Robert McKee

Robert McKee Famous Quotes And Sayings

The dirty secret of art is you don't have to show people your bad writing. That's what we have the delete key for. — Robert McKee

Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity. — Robert McKee

The principle of Creative Limitations calls for freedom within a circle of obstacles and restricted boundaries. Talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies. So we deliberately put obstacles in our path - barriers that will inspire us. We disciple ourselves as to what to do, while we're boundless as to how to do it. — Robert McKee

Story is morally neutral. It can express profound truth or propaganda. The two greatest political storytellers of the 20th Century were Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler. Because storytelling is a form of persuasive jujitsu, and because world is full of black belt storytellers, the corporate leader has to train both his offensive and defensive moves — Robert McKee

Aristotle said time is a measure of change, and this movie is about changing in time, through time, while remaining the same person. That's a philosophical paradox and a moral dilemma. But 'Casablanca' says it's possible. You can have both. That's what it means. And that's my wish for you: that you would have both. — Robert McKee

When talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience. — Robert McKee

When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit! — Robert McKee

No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best. — Robert McKee

We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad. — Robert McKee

Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative. — Robert McKee

No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much. — Robert McKee

When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore. — Robert McKee

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression. — Robert McKee

Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75 percent or more of a writer's labor goes into designing the story designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought. — Robert McKee

It seems to me that the civilized human being is a skeptic someone who believes nothing at face value. — Robert McKee

Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I've stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate--the ritual often exhausts them. — Robert McKee

I cannot be a character in a bad movie. I can't be. — Robert McKee

Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas. — Robert McKee

There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise. — Robert McKee

Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work. — Robert McKee

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form. — Robert McKee

When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller. — Robert McKee

Of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself. — Robert McKee

Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality. — Robert McKee

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world. — Robert McKee

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly. — Robert McKee

Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society. — Robert McKee

The Business story is designed to trigger the listener to take an effective action. If it doesn't, the story fails. — Robert McKee

Life Lessons by Robert McKee

1. Robert McKee encourages readers to pursue their dreams and to never give up, no matter the obstacles they may face.
2. He also emphasizes the importance of having a strong work ethic and taking risks in order to achieve success.
3. Lastly, McKee stresses the importance of understanding and learning from failure, as it can be a powerful tool for growth and development.