All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant. — Robert McKee
Being a writer in Hollywood is like going to Hitler's Eagle Nest with a great idea for a bar mitzvah. — David Mamet
But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright. — Beth Henley
I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started. — Preston Sturges
If it isn’t for the writing, we’ve got nothing. Writers are the most important people in Hollywood. And we must never let them know it. — Irving Thalberg
To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script. — Alfred Hitchcock
Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull. — Rod Serling
The writer is by nature a dreamer - a conscious dreamer. — Carson Mccullers
It's funny, in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one. — Sam Shepard
Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters. — A. Lee Martinez
[Screenwriting] is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It's about as simple as that. — James L. Brooks
The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns. — Wole Soyinka
It's not easy to strap yourself down to a desk and bash on a keyboard when you know you can direct lots of films, because directing films is fun and interactive and gregarious. Writing isn't. — Guy Ritchie
writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers. — Charles Bukowski
Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to. — T. S. Eliot
Short Screenwriter Quotes
Time is a precious thing. Never waste it. — Gene Wilder
Build your own pyramids, write your own hieroglyphs. — Kendrick Lamar
Write your Sad times in Sand,
Write your Good times in Stone. — George Bernard Shaw
Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. — William Arthur Ward
We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope. — Merle Haggard
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. — Franz Kafka
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. — Alvin Toffler
Do it because it's in your heart. Not because you want something in return. Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for. — Socrates
When you're doing an animated series, you tend to pitch storyboards. You write a script and then you draw a comic version of that script and put it up on big boards, and then you pitch it to a big room of executives and writers. — Alex Hirsch
Like most struggling writers trying to get their scripts commissioned, I had to do something odd to pay the rent. So, aged 21, I started up my own small cheesecake company in Philadelphia. — Nancy Meyers
What has always been at the heart of film making was the value of a script. It was really the writer who could make or break a film. But as we all know, the writer has always been at the bottom of the creative heap. — Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
I usually write very few stage directions. I think a lot of that is a waste of time. The art of screenwriting is in its terseness, saying a lot with a little. I have no patience when I read a script where the writer describes this guy and what he's wearing and his glasses and his hair. — Scott Frank
I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten. — Francis Ford Coppola
The challenging thing is that we go home after doing the run-through and the writers stay there working, so sometimes I get script changes delivered to me at midnight. It's constantly shifting. — Jillian Bach
They're naughty, all those writers - they mess around with people. I know James Gandolfini got a bit fed up on 'The Sopranos': if he said anything in front of a writer, told them a story from his life, it could make its way into the script. — Kelly Macdonald
If I had a script that I was ready to shoot tomorrow, I'd work on it every day until we got into production as soon as possible, but I don't have that script yet, so I'm trying to find and support writers, really young writers and hopefully come across a story that I wanna tell one day. — Logan Lerman
Most scripts are written to be green lit. They're not written to be acted. And a lot of writers with the greatest intention in the world don't write for actors. They don't understand the architecture of what an actor needs to get from point A to point B. — Laura Linney
Script Writing Quotes
You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script. — John Taylor Gatto
Initially, I thought that Ethereum was a thing that would be used for people to write simple financial scripts. As it turns out, people are writing stuff like Augur on top of it. — Vitalik Buterin
I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie. — Todd Phillips
I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent. — Peter Dinklage
Let me tell you what, reality is better than any script you could ever write. — Dana White
I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist — Harvey Pekar
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence. — Quentin Tarantino
I was very happy sitting alone at a dining room table, writing a script. — Conrad Hall
I improvise whenever I feel it's important, or whenever I think that something's there. It's nice to have a script that's so well-written that I don't have to improvise. I mean, I used to have to re-write whole movies; this is kind of nice. — Bill Murray
I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common - timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don't get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I'm not acting; I'm just expressing myself. — Lukas Haas
Screenplay Quotes
A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them. — Renny Harlin
Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?" — David Mamet
You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff, that's it. — Rita Mae Brown
Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact. — Griffin Dunne
All drama is conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character. Without character, there is no story. And without story, there is no screenplay. — Syd Field
A stage play requires very different craft from a book, fiction or otherwise, and ditto from a screenplay. — Dirk Benedict
If a story doesn't give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage. — Samuel Fuller
Usually, when special effects get in the way, it's because the story isn't strong enough. If you don't start with a strong screenplay, it's easy to fall back on special effects, thinking it's going to carry you. But it never works. It's just tiresome. — Ridley Scott
I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going. — Michael Nesmith
When I graduated college I needed to make money while I was pursuing acting, so I read screenplays and made a living writing coverage on them for studios. — Sasha Alexander
Film Writing Quotes
If I fail, the film industry writes me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart. — George A. Romero
I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody. — David Bowie
I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct. — Charlie Hunnam
The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art. — Chuck Palahniuk
A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film. — Lorrie Moore
When you're actually making a film, it's just people on your back all the time wanting stuff and you're constantly having to it deal with them. It's probably the most time consuming of all the arts, but I do love it because it is a great mix of visual art and music and writing. — Taika Waititi
I've always worked on all different types of music, some with specific project goals and deadlines and some not. Sometimes I would write a piece of music that is almost like a film score or weird electro pieces, wherever the muse took me, and I still do that. — Serj Tankian
The United States has made a massive effort since the end of the Second World War to secure the dominance of its films in foreign markets - an achievement generally pushed home politically, by writing clauses into various treaties and aid packages. — Fredric Jameson
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. — Robert McKee
I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it. — Satyajit Ray
Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple — Gene Wilder
When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite. — Sergio Leone
I think what's important for kids to know is that your decisions here on earth matter, your behavior matters and how you treat other people matters. — Matt Damon
Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don’t risk failure, you’re never going to do anything that’s different from what you’ve already done or what somebody else has done. — Charlie Kaufman
It’s about misunderstandings between people and places, being disconnected and looking for moments of connection. There are so many moments in life when people don’t say what they mean, when they are just missing each other, waiting to run into each other in a hallway. — Sofia Coppola
All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction. — Steve Almond
If you're just creative, you'll always have to rely on technical people. If you're creative and technical, you're unstoppable. — Robert Rodriguez
It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else. — John Waters
Certain experiences you can't survive, and afterward you don't fully exist, even if you failed to die. — Nic Pizzolatto
The Alexander Technique works... I recommend it enthusiastically to anyone who has neck pains or back pain. — Roald Dahl
We weep for a bird’s cry, but not for a fish’s blood. Blessed are those with a voice. — Mamoru Oshii
You're nothing short of my everything. — Ralph Block
Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used. — Max Brooks
Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse. — William S. Burroughs
I've always felt that music is more expressive than dialogue. I've always said that my best dialogue and screenwriter is Ennio Morricone. Because, many times, it is more important a note or an orchestration than a line said. — Sergio Leone
You can't fix a bad script after you start shooting. The problems on the page only get bigger as they move to the big screen. — Howard Hawks
I'm not living the life I thought I would lead, but it does have meaning, purpose. There is love... there is joy... there is laughter. — Christopher Reeve
He'd discovered that his memories of that summer were like bad movie montages - young lovers tossing a Frisbee in the park, sharing a melting ice-cream cone, bicycling along the river, laughing, talking, kissing, a sappy score drowning out the dialogue because the screenwriter had no idea what these two people might say to each other. — Richard Russo
Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you. — George R. R. Martin
There is no point in having sharp images when you've fuzzy ideas. — Jean-Luc Godard
Audiences are harder to please if you're just giving them effects, but they're easy to please if it's a good story. — Steven Spielberg
I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not watching plays. — Zoe Kazan
Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words. — Steven Bochco
America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less. — Ayn Rand
In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page. — Christopher Guest
I've always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn't I? — Roald Dahl
Pictures are written, acted, directed, photographed, edited, scored and all that. The screenwriter determines what scenes are in and what scenes are out; decides whether that bit of information is dramatized or just referred to; whether it takes place on or off screen. There are millions of decisions made by the screenwriter. — Ernest Lehman
In Conclusion
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