Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, And The Principles Of Screenwriting Quotes
All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.
A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.
When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.
Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.
In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.
Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.
In comedy laughter settles all arguments.
No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.
Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.
Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.
Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.
No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.
Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.
True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.
You do not keep the audience's interest by giving it information, but by withholding information ....
If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.