Screenwriting Quotes · Page 3

“people don't really want original stories. they want different versions of the same story. this is called meta-narrative.”

— Chester Elijah Branch

It's possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can't make a good movie from…

— George Clooney

Scripts are what matter... if you get those foundations wrong, then you absolutely don’t stand a shot.

— Tim Bevan

I've been doing a bit of screenwriting and producing, and even a bit of directing.

— Irvine Welsh

“Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together.”

— Darlene Craviotto

Screenwriting is an opportunity to fly first class, be treated like a celebrity, sit around the pool and be betrayed.

— Ian Mcewan

I don't think screenwriting is therapeutic. It's actually really, really hard for me. It's not an enjoyable process.

— Charlie Kaufman

If a story doesn't give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage.

— Samuel Fuller

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

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

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

Screenwriting and the movie stuff could all disappear tomorrow, but to sit down with my laptop and still tell stories is my…

— Jonathan Tropper

I've taught both screenwriting and playwriting, and playwriting is both much harder and much more rewarding. One can teach people how to…

— David Ives

All drama is conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character. Without character, there is no story.…

— Syd Field

I have a feeling the writers who find screenwriting difficult are usually just not lazy enough for the job. They don't know…

— Jonathan Raymond

I've quit writing screenplay [adaptations]. It's too much work. I don't look at writing a novel as work, because I only have…

— Elmore Leonard

I thought The Big Short deserved a nomination because Adam MacKay is one of the best filmmakers. A lot of what he…

— Bun B

The reason for his seven-year hiatus in direction: My son Aditya made Mohabbatein (2000), which took a lot of time and energy.…

— Yash Chopra

I just always remember myself as the teenager with questions about movies and screenwriting. I would hope that there was somebody out…

— John August

Even with college, the reason I wanted to go so badly is because I wanted to major in film. I want to…

— Miranda Cosgrove

Screenwriting involves an often un-personal process. Co-writers, directors, producers, everyone has a say in what you put on a page, and stories…

— Chiara Barzini

Few literary depictions of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake match the intensity and visceral power of those in Flacco's gripping first novel.…

— William Bernhardt

I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.

— Charlie Kaufman

If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly.

— Olivia Colman

There's a satisfaction I get from writing fiction that I will never get from screenwriting.

— Jonathan Tropper

I teach a course in screenwriting at Columbia, but I've never taken a course and I've never read a book about it!

— Paul Schrader

“To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message.”

— Chester Elijiah Branch

Screenwriting and making movies is really playing make-believe like most of us did as children.

— Gabriel Campisi

“ Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously.”

— Carrie Fisher

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

— Meg Cabot

I just stopped playing. I did some screenwriting and got into the nature thing. Music kind of went away.

— Billy Squier

The old days of screenwriting, and myths about screenwriting, are maybe over. It's a literary form, if you can wake up to…

— William Monahan

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

— Robert McKee

If you have someone on the set for the hair, why would you not have someone for the words?

— Louis Malle

The screenplay is so well-written in a scruffy, fanzine way that you want to rub noses in it - the noses of…

— Roger Ebert

My screenwriting credits in my career are probably not dissimilar to some other ones in the sense that a lot of the…

— Dan Gilroy

If you put someone in a room with no script to direct, they're just going to sit there. Writing scripts is the…

— John Patrick Shanley

I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not…

— Zoe Kazan