Screenwriting Quotes · Page 2

“Novelist by day; screenwriter by night.”

— A.D. Posey

Screenwriting is about condensing.

— Nick Hornby

“Plot is a by-product of Character.”

— Dan Joseph Decker

There is no point in having sharp images when you've fuzzy ideas.

— Jean-Luc Godard

Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me.

— Billy Bob Thornton

My entry into screenwriting was not smooth.

— Jon Ronson

A dramatic writer should never tell anything he can show.

— Nunnally Johnson

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

— Bret Easton Ellis

Screenwriting is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It's about as simple as that.

— James L. Brooks

Working at Pixar has been like my graduate school for screenwriting.

— Michael Arndt

Writing a novel can be solitary at times compared to screenwriting, but I don't mind that.

— Ruth Jones

I see screenwriting as a bit like a math equation which I have to solve.

— Asghar Farhadi

All screenwriting books are bullshit, all. Watch movies, read screenplays. Let them be your guide.

— Brian Koppelman

Writing a whole series was a crash course in screenwriting, which is a very different muscle to standup comedy writing.

— Ronny Chieng

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've always been a writer, I've always been a storyteller, but I never thought about screenwriting.

— Diablo Cody

Who is writing these screenwriting books? Not actually writing for the studios in Hollywood. These are people that have one or a…

— Thomas Lennon

I think, in a weird way, the reason I was drawn to screenwriting and the reason I really love doing it is…

— David Benioff

The movies are fun, but I'm a novelist. In many ways, screenwriting is much easier than writing novels. I find screenplays twenty…

— Nicholas Sparks

Usually with me, the ideas I have for movies just sort of pop into my head. I've read a bunch of screenwriting…

— Leigh Whannell

I majored in screenwriting and playwriting in school - and wanted to make films as a career. But when I directed my…

— Mike Birbiglia

Novelists who get shitty about screenwriting invariably can't do it, or they can't hack it in the world of what's really, in…

— William Monahan

Once in a while there were things in screenwriting that taught me things for fiction. But there's nothing in screenwriting that teaches…

— Joan Didion

I'm generally somebody who hopes for the best. It's not what one ought to do in my line of work [screenwriting], but…

— Jonathan Tropper

Scripts are what matter. If you get the foundations right and then you get the right ingredients on top, you stand a…

— Tim Bevan

I've often said, not totally jokingly, that screenwriting doesn't really qualify as real writing at all. You don't string sentences into paragraphs.…

— Jonathan Raymond

Music, I find, gets you out of a trap [when screenwriting], because it speaks to your emotions directly, it's an abstract thing,…

— Tony Grisoni

I've never read a book or attended a class on screenwriting. I'm not opposed to the idea, but I like what I've…

— Wentworth Miller

I was a screenwriting major in college, and really wanted to do that after I graduated, but there are no job listings…

— Mike Birbiglia

I have always credited the writer of the original material above the title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or John…

— Francis Ford Coppola

I think I have always sort of cultivated a flowery writing style. I've always sort of over - written in every genre…

— Diablo Cody

It's very important for an audience to know where they are and why they are there in a musical. It allows them…

— George C. Wolfe

I want to get off with the screenwriting.

— Obie Trice

Whatever you do in terms of telling a story, the most important thing that you can define is who you are.

— John Patrick Shanley

Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

If all that's going on in your scenes is what's going on in your scenes, think about it a long time.

— William Goldman

I find that screenwriting is at best kind of a hackwork in some ways.

— John Milius

As much as I really like the screenwriting thing, the novel is where the author has so much control.

— Gillian Flynn

Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.

— Meg Cabot

“If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.”

— Robert McKee