109 Writing Dialogue Quotes

Following is our list of writing dialogue quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about what is a dialogue.

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Famous Writing Dialogue Quotes

Dialogue is a necessary evil. — Fred Zinnemann

Dialogue starts from the courageous willingness to know and be known by others. It is the painstaking and persistent effort to remove all obstacles that obscure our common humanity. — Daisaku Ikeda

Two monologues do not make a dialogue. — Jeff Daly

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it. — Ernest Hemingway

Talk and write in a way that encourages the mutual exchange of ideas and acts like a midwife to people birthing their own ideas. — Grace Lee Boggs

If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed — Paulo Freire

Writing is a struggle against silence. - Carlos Fuentes

Writing is a struggle against silence. — Carlos Fuentes

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people. — Paulo Freire

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet. — Truman Capote

If things are too similar, the dialogue is not very interesting. If you put in contrast, big and small, abstract and representational, you set up the possibility of a discourse. — Michael Craig-Martin

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory. — Emily Post

Have a dialogue between the two opposing parts and you will find that they always start out fighting each other until we come to an appreciation of difference. — Frederick Salomon Perls

Dialogue is the only way to end war and terror. We need practical solidarity with those who are weaker and diplomacy from below. — Luisa Morgantini

Before you write - remember that every speech has something of 'you' in the writing. Don't take that away when you write. Be yourself. Be comfortable in your own skin. — Phil Collins

Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well. - Mark Haddon

Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well. — Mark Haddon

Short Writing Dialogue Quotes

  • In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change. — Thich Nhat Hanh
  • Debate rather than dictate. — Naval Ravikant
  • Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated. — Marquis De Sade
  • If songs were lines in a conversation, the situation would be fine . . . — Nick Drake
  • Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull. — Rod Serling
  • Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. — Stephen King
  • Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself. — Plato
  • People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations. — Bob Dylan
  • Talk without effort is nothing. — Maria W. Stewart

Writing Dialogue Image Quotes

Writing dialogue quote There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your ow
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.

Dialogue Writing Quotes

The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics. — Richard Rorty

Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue. — Jack Woodford

All the information you need can be given in dialogue. — Elmore Leonard

Writing dialogue quote Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.

New dramatic writing has banished conversational dialogue from the stage as a relic of dramaturgy based on conflict and exchange: any story, intrigue or plot that is too neatly tied up is suspect. — Patrice Pavis

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

Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking. All conversations with older people contain repetition. Some of the ideas mean a lot to me, just interesting, so I both embrace and attack the ideas because I found them, well, delightful. — Nikki Giovanni

Writing dialogue quote Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.
Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.

Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story; not only to show the characters, but to advance. — Elizabeth Bowen

Rex Stout's narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's writing. — P. G. Wodehouse

As actors, we were fighting that tooth and nail because of fear, because language is a crutch and dialogue is a crutch, and it's so easy to just have a great writer write you a line. — Charlize Theron

I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation. — Tom Stoppard

What Is A Dialogue Quotes

I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue. — Richard Diebenkorn

Media used to be one way. Everyone else in the world just had to listen. Now the internet is allowing what used to be a monologue to become a dialogue. I think that's healthy. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The next decade cannot be a decade of confrontation and contention. It cannot be east vs. West. It cannot be men vs. women. It cannot be Islam vs. Christianity. That is what the enemies of dialogue want. — Benazir Bhutto

Writing dialogue quote Write hard and clear about what hurts.
Write hard and clear about what hurts.

Even though I started playing the violin when I was four, my early chamber music experiences helped build a strong foundation for my solo work, as all music is a rich language and dialogue that is shared on stage, no matter what the size of the ensemble. — Anne Akiko Meyers

To me, all writing is like music. And especially dialogue. I studied music in college; that is what I wanted to be, a composer. Acting got me sidetracked. — Dirk Benedict

The discernment of a vocation is above all the fruit of an intimate dialogue between the Lord and his disciples. Young people, if they know how to pray, can be trusted to know what to do with God's call. — Pope Benedict XVI

Writing dialogue quote Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue. But when I'm writing, the way the words sound is as important to me as what they mean. — Aaron Sorkin

Well, what we do is we have a script, of course. But for us, writing is also like storyboarding. It's drawing. And so we will cut all of those drawings together with music, sound effects and dialogue. And we screen this kind of stick-figure version of the film. — Pete Docter

Part of the fun of writing, touring, teaching, is engaging with real people about all of it: what to do now, how to build a movement, of approaches to teaching, of parenting - it's exciting to be in that dialogue. — Bill Ayers

There's often rarely any dialogue in a sex scene. With your fellow actor, it's good to talk about what the unspoken dialogue is, that's happening in the scene. You've got to play something rather than feel self-conscious or exposed. — Geoffrey Rush

Dialogue Quotes

In the word question, there is a beautiful word - quest. I love that word. We are all partners in a quest. The essential questions have no answers. You are my question, and I am yours - and then there is dialogue. The moment we have answers, there is no dialogue. Questions unite people. — Elie Wiesel

A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue. — Cornel West

Movies without meaningful dialogue play well all over the world. The Apostle is probably the best movie of the year, but it won't do squat in Korea. — Robert Benton

Writing dialogue quote Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.
Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.

I remain convinced that most human conflicts can be solved through genuine dialogue conducted with a spirit of openness and reconciliation. — Dalai Lama

And, moreover, it is art in its most general and comprehensive form that is here discussed, for the dialogue embraces everything connected with it, from its greatest object, the state, to its least, the embellishment of sensuous existence. — Friedrich Schleiermacher

The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him/herself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. — Paulo Freire

Writing dialogue quote A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you write them.
A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you write them.

The dialogue with financial partners continues – I talked with Chairman of the World Bank Group. The World Bank is ready to effectively and powerfully support. This is important for overcoming the effects of Russian aggression. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Human life and humanity come into being in genuine encounters. The hope for this hour depends upon the renewal of the immediacy of dialogue among human beings. — Martin Buber

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right. — Jane Goodall

Of course, China is a key to the North Korea if we're going to solve that riddle, but they could also be helpful on Iraq, which is why it's important that we maintain a constructive dialogue with China. — Frank Carlucci

Movie Dialogues Quotes

Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind. It's sort of the way dreams come to us and the way that we get knowledge from them, through television, old movies, which I watch a lot of. Lines of dialogue suddenly seem to be part of a poem. — John Ashbery

I get to be in movies where it's mostly dialogue, and I want to be in something, that for me, feels like kickboxing. — Derek Luke

The characters are so flat and the dialogue so dull you expect it to be one of those movies whose existence is justified by a big final twist. But it's three days after the screening, and still no twist. Maybe it's coming in the mail? — Kyle Smith

Writing dialogue quote Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

This sucks on so many levels." Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. — Roger Ebert

I was always cutting dialogue out when we were rehearsing, and when I produced movies, too. I felt that people don't say things in life - they act, they do things. I always wanted my characters doing, rather than saying what they were doing - which was redundant. — Donna Mills

If you make a movie about Elizabeth I, how much of the dialogue is her real words? Audiences know when they go see a movie that it is fiction. — Jean-Jacques Annaud

Writing dialogue quote You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?
You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?

I still haven't quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with dialogue in movies. — Kenneth Lonergan

If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know. — Michel Hazanavicius

Life is a B Movie: it's stupid and it's strange, it's a directionless story, the dialogue is lame, but in the 'he said she said' sometimes there's some poetry, if you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally. — Ani Difranco

You go back to those films of the '40s and '50s and hear the dialogue, the way the people played off each other - the wordplay. I think we've really lost that in movies. — Clive Owen

People Writing About Writing Dialogue

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Read quotes by Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire
quotes on oppression, education

169 2775
Read quotes by Daisaku Ikeda

Daisaku Ikeda
quotes on life, happiness and hope

181 1669
Read quotes by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway
quotes on love, writing and war

812 11022
Read quotes by Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs
quotes on friendship, education and love

71 1964
Read quotes by Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes
quotes on education, life and love

76 486
Read quotes by Truman Capote

Truman Capote
quotes on writing, love and death

291 1546

More Writing Dialogue Quotes

When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking. — August Wilson

When I'm writing a script, before I can write dialogue or anything, I have two or three hundred pages of notes, which takes me a year. So, it's not like "what happens next." I've got things that I'm thinking about but I don't settle on them. And if I try to write dialogue before then, I can't. It's just garbage. — Charlie Kaufman

I grew up in the theatre. It's where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection. — Aaron Sorkin

I think that's, it's my way of writing, it's my, it's part of you know for lack of a better word, God-given talent that I have that I'm really good at that kind of dialogue. — Quentin Tarantino

For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end. — Alberto Manguel

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk. — Elizabeth Bowen

BoJack especially is a very dialogue based show. A lot of the comedy comes from conversations, and a lot of story comes from misunderstandings and people trying to connect with each other, and there was a really interesting challenge trying to write a script with no dialogue. — Raphael Bob-Waksberg

When I decided to stop using quotation marks, it presented technical challenges: you have to conceive of dialogue differently and structure it differently for this to work. So I had a new problem, which makes writing interesting again. — Catherine Brady

I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent? — George R. R. Martin

In live-action, writing, production and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap - happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely. — Michael Arndt

I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic. — Jessica Hagedorn

I'm terrible at story and structure, but I'm not so bad at writing dialogue. — Steve Buscemi

Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak. — Rose Tremain

I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue. — Christopher Walken

Dialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. When you're writing lines you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our terms. We don't say 'Sweetheart, would you pass me the sugar bowl, which we picked up for a song at that antique stall in Munich.' — Jincy Willett

In fiction, I tend to write fairly realistic dialogue-not always, and it tends to vary from book to book. But in many books, there is a colloquialism of address. The characters will speak in a quite idiosyncratic way sometimes. — Don Delillo

As a writer, I am an intellectual. I believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment, I believe in the written word, in dialogue and in truth. I hate lies more than anything else. Most of the time I react by writing. — Henning Mankell

I think, in a weird way, the reason I was drawn to screenwriting and the reason I really love doing it is because I love writing dialogue. — David Benioff

I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue. — Francis Ford Coppola

I like Quentin Tarantino, especially the early films, but I'm a big fan of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges... you know, people were writing great dialogue back then. It's as if people only have the memory of the last 15 years. So, before Tarantino no one was writing witty dialogue? That's ridiculous. Why do we have to keep referring to Tarantino? — John Michael McDonagh

From 1940 to about 1960, I had been writing just regular comics, the way my publishers wanted me too. He didn't want me to use words of more than two syllables if I could help it. He didn't want me to waste time on worrying about good dialogue or characterization. Just give me a lot of action, lot of fight scenes. — Stan Lee

There's a point I can get to where I start writing character and then through the dialogue, after all of this preparation, the thing starts to feel like it's a character developing through the dialogue. A lot of character traits do come from writing dialogue, but I have to be ready to do it. — Charlie Kaufman

Noah Baumbach writing is really wonderful. I think the way he plays out each character with a unique voice is really impressive, and rhythmically his dialogue works. — Naomi Watts

When writing dialogue, I hear it in both Russian and English, and try to find a language that combines the two. — David Bezmozgis

A reader's emotions can be sparked with few words. That's the power of dialogue. — Sol Stein

All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented. — Elizabeth Bowen

Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour. — Ernest Hemingway

I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real. — Zach Braff

Then they started pulling me in and I was very resistant. All the other actors would be saying write more, more dialogue for me, and I'd always be saying 'No, less, less'. — Peter Berg

I find it much easier to write comic-books than lyrics actually because it's a natural dialogue. Writing song lyrics is not natural but over the years I know what I need to know to get it done. I find it quite easy to capture a character and use my own personality and humour. — Scott Ian

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