Best Screenplay Quotes & Sayings

I would like Albert Brooks to have received the Oscars for best actor, best director and best screenplay for 'Modern Romance.' I love that movie. — Andy Kindler

If you play it straight it's funny - the best comedy is always played straight down the middle. The adjustment is understanding from the screenplay that a moment is hilarious. — Tom Hiddleston

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive. — Charlie Kaufman

After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few - but by January 2006, I wanted out. — Nick Harkaway

Why does Kubrick always chill our blood, and make us huddled up scared stiff with eyes wide shut? Because even dead he's still "Shinnying" with his old hand and his eye-catching plots. — Ana Claudia Antunes

No false promises are made that if you read these pages, you will learn the formula for writing a million-dollar screenplay; in fact, the dirty little secret of screenwriting books is that anyone who promises such formulas is lying. There — Peter Hanson

I set out to write a screenplay but, since my early 20s, had dreamed of writing a novel. — Graeme Simsion

I present the nominees, well, not me the Voice of God, for Best Screenplay. — Emma Thompson

I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions. — Richard Price

The screenplay is a great document because it makes you have many discussions prior to actually being on the floor. — Robert Schwentke

Since I worked with Danny Boyle before on Slumdog Millionaire, we have great success and everything. So, when I first got the script and the screenplay of Simon (Beaufoy) and I was reading it, even before the shoot, some kind of sounds came into my mind and I put some stuff [down] and sent it to Danny when he was cutting the movie. — A.R. Rahman

I sold my first screenplay six months before 'Glee,' but they had the option for a year and now it's back with me. — Dianna Agron

If I'm feeling something, I have a lot of different ways to express it, you know? I can write an article about it. I can write a screenplay about it. I can act in someone's thing. — Josh Radnor

I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It's astonishing. I always wished that I could do that. — Francis Ford Coppola

I don't want to write any more screenplays, I'll tell you that right now. It's a waste of time. You've got too many people who think they have the answer to a good screenplay and they don't. No one knows. — Elmore Leonard

I think longer that you sit on a screenplay the longer you sit. I'm a firm believer that you can write the magic out of a movie, out of a screenplay. I'm not saying that the first draft is always the best draft but a lot of times the magic is in the first couple of drafts. T — Todd Farmer

My understanding of films was just as much as any young girl who watches Bollywood films. I had no idea about the whole process of filmmaking, about dialogue writing, scripts, screenplay etc. I had probably gone to two or three film shoots in my childhood. — Rani Mukerji

'Y Tu Mama Tambien' is one of the first unrated movies to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. But many video stores won't take a movie that's not rated, so I had to make the movie an R. — Alfonso Cuaron

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing. — Rupert Sanders

It really depends on what the screenplay is asking of you, and what your responsibility is to that character. You have the author's intent to deal with, you have the filmmaker's vision, and then you have your own wants, desires and needs for the character. It's collaborative. But I knew, right off the bat, that there was no way to go into some sort of pink-haired, clown-nosed character with Ronald McDonald shoes. — Johnny Depp

I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You can't follow the form of the novel. It's a different thing completely. It's impossible. You just somehow have to find a structure for the whole thing. You have to crack that. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Everybody in L.A. has a screenplay. The guy pumping your gas has a screenplay. — Melanie Mayron

Scripts are what matter. If you get the foundations right and then you get the right ingredients on top, you stand a shot ... but if you get those foundations wrong, then you absolutely don't stand a shot. It's very rare-almost never-that a good film gets made from a bad screenplay. — Tim Bevan

I've been a professional athlete, I've directed films, I've run a company with 150 employees, and nothing compares to writing a screenplay. Just the second I think I know what I'm doing, the rug gets pulled out and I have no idea what I'm doing. Because there are so many problems to solve. — Stacy Peralta

If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something. — Bill Murray

Usually if you read a screenplay, no matter who's writing it, the bad guy is always written as a one-dimensional bad guy. — Mickey Rourke

Once I started writing the screenplay of 'Bride & Prejudice,' I was convinced Jane Austen was a Punjabi in her previous birth. — Gurinder Chadha

The secret to writing a screenplay is keeping you ass in the chair.
(ASS + CHAIR = PAGES!) — Oliver Stone

One of the things about writing a novel is you can do it any way you want. It's your voice that's important and I see absolutely no reason why a screenplay can't be the same. It makes it a hell of a lot easier when you're the writer and the director. — Quentin Tarantino

A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation. — David Nicholls

'Diary of a Teenage Girl' was my first American movie. It was my first movie in an American accent. It's based on a graphic novel, which was written in 2002 by someone called Phoebe Gloeckner. It was turned into a play by Marielle Heller, who then wrote it as a screenplay for Sundance Labs. — Bel Powley

I do not recommend writing a screenplay in two weeks. — Christy Hall

Everyone thinks that 'Chinatown' is the best screenplay. I'm not sure it is. — Patricia Marx

By the time I was doing "Kill Bill," it was so much filled with prose that, you know, I start seeing why people write a screenplay and make it more like a blueprint, because basically I had written - in "Kill Bill," I had basically written a novel, and basically every day I was adapting my novel to the screen on the fly, you know, on my feet. — Quentin Tarantino

I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel. — Emma Thompson

On the one occasion where I did try writing a screenplay, I found the rewriting just unendurable. — Alan Moore

I lost myself somewhere. And that's a very sad thing. Losing yourself is sad and heartbreaking. Fucking sad and fucking heartbreaking. Losing yourself isn't like losing a key to your house. It isn't like losing an expensive pair of sunglasses or even the only copy of the greatest screenplay you've ever written. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

First, there has been a lot of interest in The Drive-in, but, alas, it hasn't actually come to fruition. Maybe soon. Don really got Bubba and I didn't think it could be a film. I thought it was too odd to make it to film. He asked me to do the screenplay, but I declined. I didn't see that it could be a screenplay but he wrote one and proved me wrong. He was always considerate about what I thought about the film and the story's presentation, but in the end, he's the director and he had to make decisions. All good ones. — Joe R. Lansdale

My back went out and I gained 40 pounds while sweating over 'Perestroika.' It was incredibly hard, the hardest thing I had to do before the screenplay to 'Lincoln.' — Tony Kushner

If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff. — David Benioff

'Rent' was a special project for me. It was my first notable screenplay job. I worked with two wonderful directors on it, starting with Spike Lee in the summer of 2001. I wrote a draft for Spike and he was really good to me. — Stephen Chbosky

I never could have written the screenplay because I would have been forced to learn new software and I can't learn one more thing. — Augusten Burroughs

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out. — Stanley Tucci

Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts - works just as good for a 'N.Y. Times' op-ed as a screenplay or a short story. — Andrew Vachss