Screenwriters Quotes

With a screenwriter and with the actors there is always an environment of trust. You can say anything, all your secrets, and you know that it won't get out of that room.

I was a novelist before I was a TV screenwriter. Actually, as a kid, I think I'd always wanted to be a writer, but never thought that I would be one.

The eternal challenge for screenwriter adapters is figuring out how to make something work on screen, when so much of what made it work in the book were the thoughts of the character, and obviously wanting to avoid voiceover.

If a novelist has created vivid characters, interesting relationships, settings the reader can easily imagine, and intriguing stories, a screenwriter has loads to work with. The challenge comes with deciding what to cut and what to keep.

We in the industry know that behind every successful screenwriter stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife.

When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.

Starting in 98 when I was researching Traffic, I got to meet really serious people in Washington, which for a screenwriter was kind of a great gift. And I really valued these guys; I stayed in touch with them, and I find their point-of-view quite interesting.

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.

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.

Fiction and screenwriting blend for me. I feel like being a TV writer/screenwriter has definitely made my fiction writing better, although I have less time to do it.

I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population and gave birth to the whole world. Without them the rest [of the world] are not getting to know the whole story.

I've certainly seen stats that if you have a woman director or a woman screenwriter, the number of female characters goes way up.

My teacher once told me – ”No one is perfect……..that is why pencils have erasers.”

When a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he's seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.

Time is a precious thing. Never waste it.

Stories are a different kind of true.

Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles.

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.

I've always felt that music is more expressive than dialogue. I've always said that my best dialogue and screenwriter is Ennio Morricone. Because, many times, it is more important a note or an orchestration than a line said.

In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut, Renoir, Fellini. Because I've always been naturally a more introspective person, I was more interested in becoming a screenwriter than a director.

If you've got craft, you got game. If you got game, you can write your way in and out of anything. Writing is the best gig in the whole business, as far as I'm concerned. It's the only job where you don't have to wait for someone to tell you what to do. You just sit down and make s**t up.

Graphic novels and comic books offer an easy foothold into that world, and screenwriters and studio execs gravitate toward those, because I think they can see it all right there. It's like, "Here's what the movie looks like."

The Iraq war is a huge subject and there have been many films about it. But it was when the private contractors started taking over and taking responsibilities from the regular army, which hides the war. You have these private armies of mercenaries acting with immunity for their actions, the worst of which was the Blackwater case where they killed 17 Iraqi civilians and the guys who did it just went home. We [screenwriter Paul Laverty and Loach] felt this deserved a story.

I don't think I'm more of a screenwriter than I am a fiction writer. I'm more of a reader than a film-watcher, so I imagine that I'm not approaching fiction or films in a particularly cinematic way.

All drama is conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character. Without character, there is no story. And without story, there is no screenplay.

As they say in Corsica... Goodbye!

When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.

The Voice There is a voice inside of you That whispers all day long, "I feel this is right for me, I know that this is wrong." No teacher, preacher, parent, friend Or wise man can decide What's right for you--just listen to The voice that speaks inside.

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.

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple

We weep for a bird’s cry, but not for a fish’s blood. Blessed are those with a voice.

I've always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn't I?

Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don’t risk failure, you’re never going to do anything that’s different from what you’ve already done or what somebody else has done.

A Message to Children Who Have Read This Book - When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

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.

The world needs you. It doesn't need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties - these books exist, and they're tempting - but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, 'I don't know,' and being kind.

I am. I think. I will.

Texas women have an amazing sense of purpose when they lose it. They're the best girls in the world - they're loyal and fun, but when they get mad, they'll try to kill you.

Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness- happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you're lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.

If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

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.

Screenwriter Flacco nicely evokes the aftermath of San Francisco's 1906 earthquake in his fiction debut, a novel of suspense.

"Admission" is Paul Weitz's movie. This is Karen Croner - the screenwriter's - movie. To have such a lovely role in such a beautifully written script offered to me, it's like elves made the shoes.

Every adaptation requires that the screenwriter make difficult choices - and in particular, difficult cuts.

If you put your foot in it, be sure it's your best foot.

Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.

That's the funny thing about life. We're rarely aware of the bullets we dodge. The just-misses. The almost-never-happeneds. We spend so much time worrying about how the future is going to play out and not nearly enough time admiring the precious perfection of the present.

The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that's what you've given me. That's what I'd hoped to give you forever

The two explorers are given fictional names. But as in real life, they travel to the Amazon roughly a generation apart, in the early-to-mid 20th century. In the film, they're both guided by Karamakate, as a young man early in the story and later as an old shaman. He and the outsiders share a desire for knowledge - self knowledge and an understanding of the world around them, says the film's co-screenwriter, Jacques Toulemonde.