Quotes & Sayings About Screenplays

Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer. — George Lucas

I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays. — Beth Henley

Movies are not the book. Movies are not even the screenplay. They are the movie. — Bruce Joel Rubin

I've always written a little bit. I mean, I've written screenplays, and I've doctored my dialogue for years, and I've written speeches - I was a speechwriter on 'The West Wing,' so I like that kind of thing. But I never really thought I'd write a book. — Rob Lowe

I'm currently writing a screenplay that I haven't started yet. — Serena Williams

I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut. — John Fusco

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade. — Cary Fukunaga

My first book, about Ruby Ridge, was made into a miniseries on CBS in 1996, and since then, I've dabbled in Hollywood, pitched a few things, sold a couple of screenplays and a pilot that I wrote with a buddy from Spokane, flirted with seeing 'Citizen Vince' as a film, and most recently, adapted 'The Financial Lives of the Poets' as a script. — Jess Walter

The service in L.A. is the best. You don't get sarcastic, surly, fed-up waiters and waitresses like you do in England. They're good at their job and they're there for the customer. The only depressing thing is a lot of them have written more screenplays than me. — Ricky Gervais

You write a screenplay and then everybody is going to want to get in on it and we have to figure that out. I've written three screenplays that are at studios and I still haven't been making them yet so there is always something that is either going to trip something up or maybe get another pass. — Craig Brewer

Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art. — Paul Schrader

Screenplays are not writing. They're a fake form of writing. It's a lot of dialogue and very little atmosphere. Very little description. Very little character work. It's very dangerous. You'll never learn to write. — Ray Bradbury

Every writer dreams about the day they can step into their fiction and wander its hallways. — Shannon L. Alder

Writing screenplays is incredibly hard. I can't call it joy. Writing Novels? Joy. Directing? Joy. Writing Screenplays? That's where you pay all your dues. — Stephen Chbosky

I think it started to feel like home when I stopped maintaining any pretense that I was ever going to be in the movie business. I went there like many writers - I had a screenplay deal and I would go to these meetings and it was the typical thing. And I hated it. I was not interested in writing screenplays, actually. But I kept feeling like that was what I was supposed to do. It was just this horrible cognitive dissonance. — Meghan Daum

I have a couple screenplays that are done, and I'm looking for the right people to help me make them. I do a lot of television writing to develop new ideas for shows. — Jimmi Simpson

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel. — Tom Perrotta

Actually, screenplays were much more detailed than what I did in the book In the book I had to invent a style for communicating what the sensation of looking at a film would be, whereas the screenplays I wrote in Paris were actual blueprints for how to do the film, with every gesture, every little movement noted in exhaustive detail. — Paul Auster

I saw Dolce Vita and my mind was blown by it, by the synthesis. I realised I wanted to be a filmmaker and started making films. I was writing screenplays and couldn't get money because my work was so uncommercial. — Rebecca Miller

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

Bob Glaudini, the writer, he's a wonderfully talented man and all his plays and his screenplays, they all have sense of something bigger, even though you're looking at something very simple. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

I definitely want to do more movies, and I'm also a writer, so I have a few screenplays that I'm working on, one of them based off my one-woman show that I used to do in New York. Two of the screenplays I've written by myself, and then I'm also working on one with my writing partner, Tom Riley, who's in London. — Eliza Coupe

When people asked me what I was going to do when I grow up, I always said, 'I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to write screenplays. I'm going to write books. I'm going to write plays. That's what I'm going to do.' — Mara Wilson

If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn't be writing screenplays. I'd be writing novels. — Quentin Tarantino

I wrote several screenplays over the years to really polish my craft and learn from my mistakes. — Gabriel Campisi

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit. — Nia Vardalos

Writing screenplays is very freeing from what you can do in comics in a lot of ways. You can change things around. I can take great delight in writing 40 pages, then just pressing delete and getting rid of it and not thinking about it ever again. Whereas in comics, if I had put that kind of effort into it, I couldn't go on. — Daniel Clowes

So I have 8 to 10 screenplays written and unproduced. And frankly, some of them are my favorite stories. I have a Western version of The Count Of Monte Cristo where the count has a clockwork hand. I have a screenplay called Mephisto's Bridge about a Faustian deal with the devil. I love them all. — Guillermo Del Toro

There are a lot of bad screenplays so if you write a good screenplay people are going to respond to it. — Quentin Tarantino

I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels ... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature. — Seth Grahame-Smith

I had left the music industry at the end of 2001, after 10 years, and had spent three years writing every single day - producing two unpublished novels, one abandoned novel, and three unproduced screenplays. The word 'no' and I were on more than nodding terms. The word 'no' and I were talking about going on holiday together. — John Niven

Novelist by day; screenwriter by night. — A.D. Posey

Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love. — Michael Haneke

I don't read books on how to write screenplays just because I'm stubborn. So it's all sort of made up. — Shane Carruth

I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it. — Charlie Kaufman

The movies are fun, but I'm a novelist. In many ways, screenwriting is much easier than writing novels. I find screenplays twenty times easier to write than a novel. — Nicholas Sparks

I've written a couple screenplays and half-finished plays. — Christopher Meloni

Of all the most devastating sounds in the universe, silence is the most powerful. — Gerard De Marigny

I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees. — Bruce Vilanch

Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can. — Nick Cave

I counted it up once. I think I have written 45 full screenplays. Of those, maybe 15 have been shot, in some form. That's a pretty good track record, but it's not 100%. It is frustrating that, as a screenwriter, I've seen all those movies and they don't exist in the real world. They're juts inside my head and on those pages. — John August

I've been writing screenplays for a long time, and a lot of it came out of the journalism I was doing. — Peter Landesman

With screenplays, it's all about being as concise as possible. If you have a scene that's set in a bar, you just have to write, 'Interior: Bar.' — David Benioff

I like writing comic pages, discovering the rhythm of the panels, learning how much you can and can't express. It's good to stretch myself as a writer instead of always doing prose work; I write screenplays for the same reason. — Chris Wooding

The way you write dialogue is the same whether you're writing for movies or TV or games. We use movie scriptwriting software to write the screenplays for our games, but naturally we have things in the script that you would never have in a movie script
different branches and optional dialogue, for example. But still, when it comes to storytelling and dialogue, they are very much the same. — Sam Lake

When writing screenplays, it's a matter of remembering to leave off the page anything and everything that doesn't appear on the screen. — Taiye Selasi

Suddenly I was writing a lot of screenplays, and I was no long in New York, so I stopped acting in plays, and it just became too tricky to find a part to play, either in a play or a film that coincided with my schedule writing and or directing. — Michael Cristofer

Most screenplays, most motion pictures, owe much more to the screenplay. Ingmar Bergman has such an economy of language, so little language in his piece, it is so visual, his moods are introduced and buttressed by camera rather than by word or character. But again, that's unique. — Rod Serling

The mix of soft-focus glamour,Mills and Boon romance and the inevitable feel-good ending is here, but what marks these films is an authentic core.Genuine, unaffected moments, long absent from 70mm movie content, are back. — Anupama Chopra

I've always said that movies are kind of like love affairs. Two people come together, and if they're at the right place at the right time and it's the right situation, it clicks. I've always felt that I've connected with screenplays. It's the romantic in me. — Robert Zemeckis

[Over breakfast] We discussed the 'novelisation' question. This is where the studio pay someone to novelise my script and sell it as Sense and Sensibility. I've said if this happens I will hang myself. Revolting notion. Beyond revolting.
Lindsay [Doran] said that the executive she had discussed it with had said 'as a human being I agree with you
but ... ' I laughed until my porridge was cool enough to swallow. — Emma Thompson

I'm completely surrounded, not only my father, but also my three brothers, and Sergio, my husband, all four of them work in film. Some are writers, or directors, or cinematographers, all of them. I'm surrounded by men that make films, so much that at some point I felt there was no more room in the family for another filmmaker.For many years I was only working as novelist or writing screenplays for others to direct. — Lucia Puenzo

In my screenplays - from the very beginning I've always used tape. I talk my screenplays. And then have somebody transcribe them. — Albert Brooks

There are many self-proclaimed "screenwriting gurus" - though how you get to be a "guru" of something you've never actually done is beyond us. Screenplays are like blueprints. A guy who's drawn up a lot of blueprints that have never actually been made into buildings is not an "architecture guru," he's an "unemployed douchebag." A guy who talks about screen-writing but who's never sold a screenplay is not a "screenwriting guru," he's a "lecture circuit bullshit artist." From now on, that's what we'll call them. — Thomas Lennon

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet. — Rose Tremain

I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays. — Alice Hoffman

I have written screenplays. Most recently for Errol Morris, who was thinking about doing his first fiction movie, and with a young director who wanted to adopt Project X. Errol was a hoot. I loved talking with him. We were a good match, too, because we both kept joking that we'd found the only other person on earth more ambivalent than we were about the project. — Jim Shepard

Screenplays are the hardest thing to try to get right. They look so simple when they work, but they really destroy your brain cells trying to get them there. — Jerry Bruckheimer

But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. (Later, as a screenwriter, I learned it's what all movies demanded.) When this scene occurred, in the last ten minutes, Julian looked at me in the darkness, stunned. "I died," he whispered. "They killed me off." I waited a bit before sighing, "But you're still here." Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended, the credits rolling over the palm trees as I (improbably) take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away. — Bret Easton Ellis

I find reading screenplays difficult, as they're only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being. — Daniel Handler

I have written a couple of screenplays for studios, and each time has been less gratifying than the last. In my experience, they want no real representations of homosexuality, they want no complexity, they are terrified of ambiguity and unanswered questions - they don't know what they want, except that they want to make lots of money. The only freedom I've ever had as an artist has been in the theatre ... — Craig Lucas

He took me from not being able to write a word in terms of writing screenplays to being the king of wooden dialogue. — George Lucas

Stallone is a great writer. He wrote one of the best screenplays ever written. Rocky. It is one of the biggest classics of all time. I think in the past, he was shying away from writing his own stuff, because there is a lot of pressure when you star in something that you write. — Dolph Lundgren

As a writer of both novels and screenplays, I can say that screenwriting is a vastly rewarding creative life - if you fight hard enough to do it on your own terms. Whether I write books or not, my screenwriting life has been creatively rewarding and remains so. — John Fusco

I try to only work on the screenplays for a few hours a day when I'm in my most voluble mood, just sort of writing whatever comes into my head. It's a very freeing thing. — Daniel Clowes

I write mostly as a director. That's why my screenplays are very detailed. So I get into the images I see. I like that. — Deepa Mehta

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

Coffee shops are everywhere, especially in Los Angeles, chock full of sad sacks desperate to make sure their screenplays make it into the right hands ... or any hands, for that matter. The one thing that makes a coffee shop truly great, though, is charm. — Nate Corddry

I've come to view screenwriting assignments as playwriting grants, because they provide a considerable financial cushion. However, they can also be extremely time-consuming. Film projects tend to drag on and on, which takes me away from the theatre, and then they don't get made. At the same time, the screenplays that have come my way have been quite challenging, for the most part, and even enjoyable. — Donald Margulies

I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation. — Satyajit Ray

I know I'll keep writing poems. That's the constant. I don't know about novels. They're hard. It takes so much concentrated effort. When I'm writing a novel it's pretty much all I can do. I get bored. It takes months. Movies do the same thing. It's all-encompassing. It feels like I'm going to end up writing poems, short stories and screenplays. — Sherman Alexie

I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays. — Charlie Kaufman

I'm developing some screenplays at the moment with my Australian producer. — Rachel Griffiths

There always had to be a survivor. Maybe this simply spoke to the optimism of the men writing those screenplays; even with an uncomfortable sci fi plot they had to subconsciously comfort themselves by thinking that at least a hundred people would survive.
Someone has to survive — Chris Dietzel

I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When I've told a story, I want to tell another story. — Joss Whedon

The first thing to look out for after your first big success are drugs and screenplays. — Richard Price

Writing screenplays is not my business. I've written half a dozen, and maybe half of those were made. But it was never a satisfying experience. It was just work. You're an employee. You would be told what to do. Studio execs would cross out my dialogue and put in their dialogue. — Elmore Leonard

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

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've had a real lucky time working in Hollywood. I've talked to other screenwriters, and they're all kind of beaten down and their spirits are crushed, because they work on these screenplays and these projects, and then directors either take them and change everything, rewrite them and make them worse, or they film them and they're nothing like how they imagined it to be. — Daniel Clowes

The reason I shift gears constantly, why I'm doing an opera, why I've done essays, why I've written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays ... is so I will have new ways of failing. This means becoming a student again. — Ray Bradbury

Scrivener is where I live. I'm planning the next novel, two screenplays and a couple of short stories with it and it's amazing how fluid the software makes the process. I genuinely think this is the biggest software advance for writers since the word processor. — Michael Marshall Smith

By the time someone gave me some samples of standard screenplays I was already beyond that stuff, because I was not only a tinkerer in ways to do things, I'd started from Dylan Thomas. As a screen dramatist he was a very intense visualist, with great timing and fluency. — William Monahan

When I moved out to Los Angeles to get some film and television work, and couldn't get any ... I became a little isolated, a little terrified, and it's a good place to get writing, because you're so bored. So I wrote a few screenplays, and people notice those. — Clark Gregg

In the past, I'll admit, I've enjoyed being compared to the protagonists in my screenplays. — Diablo Cody

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive. — Ridley Scott

I've written about 15 screenplays and they all sold - they were all sold on pitches. — Bruce Vilanch

When I met Judd Apatow, he told me I should start writing screenplays. They'd be really bad at first, but the more I did it, the better I'd get. — Bill Hader

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

I do love the challenge of screenplays. They're so difficult, such an alien form. It makes them endlessly fascinating. Something I can't keep my fingers out of. — Stephen Graham Jones

It's intuitive in terms of when I read a piece of material or I hear about a project. I'm a writer, so I've written movies. I've read at this point thousands and thousands and thousands of screenplays. So if something gets me, then I don't ignore that. — Matt Damon

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

I can write ten or twelve screenplays in the time it takes me to write one novel. This allows me to offload all of my stories. But it's also not as creatively fulfilling. — Benjamin Percy

Usually, the biggest problems of adapting plays into screenplays is that they stick too close to the play, and I think film is a completely different medium. I think a novel is much closer to a film ... — Arthur Miller

With the right tools, you can write anything ... — Jeff Lyons

I wrote a few unsuccessful screenplays before I wrote 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.' I wrote them as television plays that never got made. I'm glad I wrote them - I think it was a good experience. — Kelly Masterson

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me. — Emma Thompson

I don't object to the proliferation of the 'f-bomb' in screenplays because the adjective is vulgar but because it is unimaginative. — Ron Brackin

Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director. — Tom Skerritt