Quotes & Sayings About Screenwriters

I've been playing with this idea in my mind that the hero's journey that we're all taught as screenwriters may resonate more specifically for male protagonists and maybe even male viewers. — Jill Soloway

Screenwriting is like poker; in the end, you have to go all in. — A.D. Posey

Beauty is a heart with wings. — A.D. Posey

Our peace is our purpose. — A.D. Posey

I hate when people say, 'Oh, they laughed all the way to the bank.' That's nonsense because the most cynical, unhappy people are Hollywood screenwriters. They earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for work that's never made. — Susan Isaacs

India needs better producers than screenwriters. No producer wants to invest in out-of-the way scripts. — Anurag Kashyap

Comic books themselves are getting more literate. And there are people who are screenwriters and television writers and novelists who are writing for the comics, for some reason, they love doing it and some of the art work in the comics, I mean it rivals anything you'll see hanging on the walls of museums, they're illustrations more than drawings and all the people are discovering this and they're turning on to it. — Stan Lee

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

Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins. — John Scalzi

I think part of being a good screenwriter is being as concise as possible. — Eric Roth

There's no big splashy renaissance in Italian films. We have good young actors and directors. What we lack are screenwriters. It's hard to write about Italy. — Valeria Golino

I wouldn't say I see things visually first, but what I do think is important, for a lot of screenwriters, is to not just think about the words on the page, but also the world as a whole and the vibe of the movie, rather than a sequence of scenes written on the page. — Evan Daugherty

Love is written by the soul. — A.D. Posey

If you don't think screenwriting is a work of art, good luck in your life without a soul. — A.D. Posey

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

Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity. — Robert McKee

Not a word of my writing has ever been changed by another person's hands, and I don't think many screenwriters can say that. — Brian K. Vaughan

I grew up in the Midwest; you don't know any screenwriters. It didn't seem like a realistic career possibility. — Diablo Cody

There's a lot for screenwriters to steal from songwriters, in terms of getting to the point. — Paul Thomas Anderson

Try everything; listen to everyone. Follow no one. You are your own story guru! — Jeff Lyons

A lot of college graduates approach me about becoming screenwriters. I tell them, 'Do not become a screenwriter, become a journalist,' because journalists go into worlds that are not their own. Kids who go to Hollywood write coming-of-age stories for their first scripts, about what happened to them when they were sixteen. Then they write the summer camp script. At the age of twenty-three they haven't produced anything, and that's the end of the career. — Nora Ephron

Here's my unsolicited advice to any aspiring screenwriters who might be reading this: Don't ever agonize about the hordes of other writers who are ostensibly your competition. No one else is capable of doing what you do. — Diablo Cody

There is magic in the old and magic in the new; the trick is to successfully combine the two. — A.D. Posey

There are a lot of women screenwriters, but they are obviously outnumbered by men. And it still is a very much male-dominated industry. — Elizabeth Meriwether

Sand lines my soul which is filled with the breath of the ocean. — A.D. Posey

L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation. — Nick Cave

If screenwriters have to kill off a female character, they love to give her cancer. We've seen so many great actresses go down to the Big C: Ali MacGraw, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon. — Geraldine Brooks

Great writers experience their dreams. They put them on paper, where others can read about them. — Ellen J. Barrier

My parents were screenwriters, and they had four daughters and we all write. So that's amazing. Talk about powerful parents. My mother always said to us, "Everything is copy." — Nora Ephron

There are so many screenwriters with incredible stories to tell, so I hope there will be some kind of shift in the business where very few types of movies are now made by the studios. There needs to be different budgets for different audiences; not everything having to be a huge opening weekend. — Callie Khouri

Hollywood screenwriters tend to have the longevity of NFL running backs. So the truth is no one can put more pressure on us than we put on ourselves. — David Benioff

Is every writer's keyboard a spill magnet? — A.D. Posey

Screenwriters get paid a hell of a lot more money but their level of frustration seems to be so high that I don't want that. — Chuck Palahniuk

There have been screenwriters who I'm sure would gladly kill me, because I've been very fast and loose with their work, because I felt like it wasn't up to my high standards. I would push and pull it on set, and make changes all the time. But then when you're working with an original screenplay, my theater instincts kick in, and I suddenly become very keeper-of-the-words. — Sam Mendes

Life is beauty simply breathing. — A.D. Posey

Young screenwriters are always very frustrated when they talk to me. They say, 'How do we get to be a screenwriter?' I say, 'You know what you do? I'll tell you the secret, it's easy: Read 'Hamlet.' You know? Then read it again, and read it again, and read it until you understand it. Read 'King Lear,' and then read 'Othello.' — John Logan

Her words dance on the page. — A.D. Posey

Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy. Worse, actually, at least the eunuch is allowed to watch. — Albert Brooks

One of the things when you write, well the way I write, is that you are writing your scenario and there are different roads that become available that the characters could go down. Screenwriters will have a habit of putting road blocks up against some of those roads because basically they can't afford to have their characters go down there because they think they are writing a movie or trying to sell a script or something like that. I have never put that kind of imposition on my characters. Wherever they go I follow. — Quentin Tarantino

As I've often observed and remarked: the most gifted screenwriters can concoct believable monsters, deviants, heroes, regular-joes, atheists, agnostics, all sorts of characters. But the believable depiction of a full-orbed Christian character is simply beyond them. Evidently they have never known (much less understood nor liked) even one credible, practicing, Biblically-faithful Christian. It's the one color missing from their palate - as starved for ideas as they are. — Dan Phillips

People kept passing our [ with Robert Ben Garant] script around, and suddenly we had this reputation as screenwriters, which we're not - we're sketch comedy guys. — Thomas Lennon

You are the executive director and screenwriter of your life. — Eric Thomas

Drizzle happiness wherever you go. — A.D. Posey

During the '90s, a lot of us in the indie film world were not making our money off our movies. We were screenwriters doing scripts for hire for studios. — Allison Anders

Too few journalists become screenwriters. I say to all the would-be screenwriters: Become journalists. And I'll say to working journalists: Do not stay journalists. Become screenwriters. — Nora Ephron

Realistically, it's the great truism that screenwriters are fungible, that at the end of the day a studio is not going to want to fire a movie star. And they're really not going to want to fire a star director because the director has the hand on the tiller of a ship. — John Logan

Most aspiring screenwriters simply don't spend enough time choosing their concept. It's by far the most common mistake I see in spec scripts. The writer has lost the race right from the gate. Months - sometimes years - are lost trying to elevate a film idea that by its nature probably had no hope of ever becoming a movie. — Terry Rossio

I've always been a bit repelled by "Sunset Boulevard", which is wrong about almost everything it touches, whether it's fame, Hollywood, screenwriters, or old ladies. Sunset Boulevard would only make sense to me if it was about John Gilbert and the pool boy. — William Monahan

A lot of screenwriters have a drawer of unsold scripts that they cut their teeth on. I don't have one. Everything I've written, after my first spec, I wrote on assignment. Everything I've written was work. — Jon Spaihts

I hear you in the morning sun. — A.D. Posey

Peace is when we look upon the world together. — A.D. Posey

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

You heard me cry long before I knew my voice. — A.D. Posey

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing. — Joe Eszterhas

I know I should be able to find a story in anything. Good screenwriters can pull interesting films out of the asinine and mundane. But everything I've read about writing always begins with 'write what you know.' What I know is: quiet streets, topiary, moronic high school arsehats, and homework. Has anyone ever made a movie about homework? Probably. I bet it was in French. — Melissa Keil

I have a lot of screenwriter friends and many of them have had an experience where they aren't even welcome on set during production. — Diablo Cody

I don't believe moviegoers don't have patience. Screenwriters are told a scene can't be longer than three minutes, that you have to cut to the chase. Not true! — Tracy Letts

Pace begins in the screenplay. Cliche or not, we must control rhythm and tempo. It needn't be a symmetrical swelling of activity and shaving of scene lengths, but progressions must be shaped. For if we don't, the film editor will. And if to trim our sloppy work he cuts some of our favorite moments, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We're screenwriters, not refugees from the novel. Cinema is a unique art form. The screenwriter must master the aesthetics of motion pictures and create a screenplay that prepares the way for the artists who follow. — Robert McKee

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

A trap screenwriters can fall into is making scripts that are good reads, which doesn't necessarily mean it will make a good film. — Peter Straughan

Even Hollywood millionaires are now clamoring for legal protections for their illegal-alien nannies and gardeners, though such elites would hardly countenance a similar legal laxity that would allow foreign film technicians, screenwriters, and actors to flood southern California to work in their industry for a fourth of their own pay. — Victor Davis Hanson

From the onset of the 'Live-Read' series, we wanted to hit all the major writers and Woody Allen is simply one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. He has ability to match pathos and comedy and drama and then turn it all on a dime. If you're going to make a series based on dialogue, you can't find much better than Woody Allen. — Jason Reitman

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

I've never been conscious of having any real career plan, and I do not have a wish-list of actors, directors, screenwriters, or cameramen I'm hoping to work with. Life, I feel, has a way of leading us to the right situations and people, or at least to interesting ones. — Viggo Mortensen

As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can't get anyone to notice the picture we just hung. — Paul Schrader

Hollywood is a special place; a place filled with creative geniuses - actors, screenwriters, directors, sound engineers, computer graphics specialists, lighting experts and so on. Working together, great art happens. But in the end, all artists depend on diverse audiences who can enjoy, be inspired by and support their work. — Ryan Kavanaugh

A great trick that I learned having worked as a screenwriter for many years, the way screenwriters work, is they break the project down into three-act structure: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. I think that is a great way to break down any project, whether it's a new business or anything at all. — Steven Pressfield

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

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

I tell my students based on my experiences in Hollywood, sure, you can always move to L.A. and try to work with the system, and people do that, but chances are if you want your story in film with characters of color, you will have to make that movie yourself. Find a way to make it yourself. Not just screenwriters, but also producers. — Tananarive Due

The screenwriters I know share a few personality traits and one of them is anxiety. — Tony Gilroy

In L.A., we have a saying - 'What do you do?' It's less of a question and more of a self-defense mechanism for wayward screenwriters looking to slip you a first draft, or the occasional actor looking to get in on the latest shoot. But I hate the question because of my own answer - I write about games. — Rob Manuel

The fact is that HBO is doing the kind of films and the kind of stories that the movie industry used to do. You look at a lot of the specialty sections of studios that have gone under ... and there's no doubt in my mind why filmmakers and screenwriters and actors are ending up at a place like HBO. They do it better than anybody. — Kevin Spacey

How often do we use other people as screens upon which to project our obsessions? Our discontents, dreams, desires, and fears? Well, I always thought, often enough that its a wonder the whole waking world isn't simply viewed as an endless improvised film. One with as many screenwriters, producers, and directors as there are actors — Bradford Morrow

Happiness is individualized. Don't box it in. Let it fly. — A.D. Posey

There are far too many screenwriters who have made themselves honorary "secret" members of the Audience Protection Society (APS). Of course, they're easy to spot, which makes their membership in this group anything but secret. They write as if they are duty bound to protect their readers from the nastiness of ruthless drama. The way they see it, if they're going to go to the trouble of creating loveable and attractive characters why throw them to blood-thirsty apes, or have them face a fate worse than death? They tell themselves that such actions would offend their audience's sensibilities, but really it's their own fears and prejudices they can't cope with, not to mention those nagging insecurities concerning their ability to write credible characters in the grip of extreme emotion. They'd rather be dead than write cheese. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

Though Moneyball had the talents of screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin going for it, they weren't baseball insiders. — Brad Pitt

Believe in people, they fly for a day. Teach them to believe in themselves, they soar for a lifetime. — A.D. Posey

Writers - all writers, even screenwriters - like to make their mark. I don't think many screenwriters can write. They pass as writers. — Elmore Leonard