Top 100 Mckee Quotes

#1. Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #808
#2. Fact, no matter how minutely observed, is truth with a small "t." Big "T" Truth is located behind, beyond, inside, below the surface of things, holding reality together or tearing it apart, and cannot be directly observed.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #3756
#3. I think I'm very open and friendly and warm.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #14022
#4. Being an actor somehow can be a perverse extension of that feeling we generally all have as children, that feeling of wanting to please. Of course you're looking for affirmation, encouragement.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #31830
#5. Dialogue concentrates meaning; conversation dilutes it.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #44137
#6. There are some artists that don't like working with other females, which is fine. They have their own thing. I personally love being surrounded by other females.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #50664
#7. Sometimes you just gotta suck at being the person people think you are.

Ellie Rose McKee

Mckee Quotes #68455
#8. Creatures stalking each other over time grew a bond from mind to mind.

Suzy McKee Charnas

Mckee Quotes #71549
#9. In real life I'm pretty easy going and pretty chill, I'm not the party girl who will go wild and crazy necessarily.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #97658
#10. I can be nostalgic for the past, and I can romanticize the future, but I cannot sugar coat the here and now. I think that's why I try not to think about it, and I think that's the exact same reason why I need to.

Ellie Rose McKee

Mckee Quotes #119853
#11. Quality storytelling inspires quality dialogue.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #128902
#12. I was writing songs as a kid about leprechauns and Catwoman and teapots - whatever it is that little girls wanna sing about. The first song I wrote was called "Kitten." It was about a boy named Liam, who I was just crazy about.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #145104
#13. Obviously I love writing with Katy [Pery], I feel like we're the same person when we write together. Even though we fight a lot, we fight over every line and we pull each other's hair and we cat-fight all the time, it's always worth it in the end.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #157853
#14. Story is about originality, not duplication

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #164293
#15. The Business story is designed to trigger the listener to take an effective action. If it doesn't, the story fails.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #164940
#16. The only way to know the truth is to witness him make choices under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #168192
#17. Sometimes I write a song and I'm down with it but I'm like yeah, whatever, and then everybody loves it and then it blows up. I'm like: "Okay! I didn't see that coming."

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #168531
#18. I'm a really visual artist, and I love writing treatments for music videos, photo shoots, fashion, and all the visual parts that go along with making an album.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #169102
#19. Wisdom is knowing the right path to take. Integrity is taking it.

M.H. McKee

Mckee Quotes #172486
#20. When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit!

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #176793
#21. A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #190070
#22. The first time I came to London on my own, I was 15. I was absolutely oblivious to so many things. I had no expectations, no fears. I just came to do a National Youth Theatre season one summer. It was just brilliant.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #213008
#23. I don't believe there is one most romantic act that a guy can do; I think it is all about the couple in question, which totally differs. It's about you thinking about the person you are with and doing something tailored and thoughtful for them.

Roxanne McKee

Mckee Quotes #216423
#24. It's just funny that anybody would care at all to take apart the words that I write. It's kind of cool!

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #218255
#25. I started writing songs when I was a little kid actually. I wrote a song about Catwoman and I wrote a song about Leprechauns, as a little kid.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #224030
#26. I criticise myself an awful lot. I do worry to the point that I don't think it's very healthy. I'm always picking my flaws. It's a terrible anxiety I have. I wish I could pretend nothing fazes me, but it does.

Roxanne McKee

Mckee Quotes #234352
#27. Where I grew up in the North-east, the community there, and the way people relate to one another, goes very deep. But I don't define myself as a Northerner in that I don't live in the North.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #238047
#28. There's a way of negotiating how you portray your private life publicly that I've never had the skill to do.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #239492
#29. No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #256103
#30. Superficial knowledge leads to a bland, monotonous telling. With authorial knowledge we can prepare a feast of pleasures. Or at the very least, add humor.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #271826
#31. I think it's nice to be able to make a product, put it out there and let other people decide what they think.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #282248
#32. Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #304011
#33. The biggest inspiration for everything I do is, of course, my wife, playwright Ruth McKee.

Brian K. Vaughan

Mckee Quotes #310485
#34. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative. Write only what you believe.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #321866
#35. ( ... )while it's true that the unexamined life is not worth living, it's also true that the unlived life isn't worth examining.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #338651
#36. What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #339779
#37. The ornaments of your home are the people who smile upon entering time and time again.

Maralee McKee

Mckee Quotes #369162
#38. The National Youth Theatre did one very simple but incredible thing for me: it made me realise I had choices.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #385026
#39. When I go and write with other artists - a lot of the time it's with them - it's like a therapy session almost. I ask them what they're listening to and what they're going through and what their influences are and I try to get inside of their head and step into their shoes for a second.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #400051
#40. No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV)

Jonathan McKee

Mckee Quotes #407861
#41. If you can't play all the instruments in the orchestra of story, no matter what music may be in your imagination, you're condemned to hum the same old tune.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #450714
#42. My instinct is probably one of the strongest assets I've got, workwise.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #456665
#43. Things are not exactly going to plan.

Suzanne Young

Mckee Quotes #463073
#44. As long as I can reach somebody, then I feel like I'm doing my job.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #466855
#45. I had an epiphany where I realised that there are song titles everywhere - in advertising, in conversations with people at the grocery store - and every time I open my mind to that and find titles, I then weave a story around that.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #479796
#46. I'd like to go the Cher route and act and sing and write and have a TV show and do it all.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #483927
#47. Every time I work with Dr. Luke I learn something new. He's kind of like the Andy Warhol of pop music, where he mass produces his art but it always still has heart and always still has an emotional thread to it. I think he's really a genius and I'm so lucky to have gotten to work with him.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #489976
#48. I've always felt my spirit animal was a Tiger, so it's funny that now in 'Roar' with Katy Perry - which is a song we write together - there's the line: "I got the eye of the Tiger ... " So I feel like there's a little bit of me in there.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #496996
#49. I cannot be a character in a bad movie. I can't be.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #519248
#50. Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #528291
#51. No matter what, I always have expensive designer shoes. It's all about the shoes for me.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #529794
#52. Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #547361
#53. As he chooses, he is.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #549236
#54. Thought can be controlled and manipulated, but emotion is willful and unpredictable.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #553616
#55. When I hear about injustice it takes every fiber of my being and strength to stop from exploding. What I don't understand is why everyone else doesn't feel the same.

Ellie Rose McKee

Mckee Quotes #556518
#56. It's amazing how, over the course of one's life, you collect so much music you don't like, so many movies you don't watch and so many books you have no intention of reading. If only regret stopped with the trivial things such as these.

Ellie Rose McKee

Mckee Quotes #577111
#57. I think what it means to be an 'American Girl,' and what I wrote the song about, is our freedoms. The idea that we as Americans can be what we want to be and say what we want to say and that we take it for granted.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #593577
#58. In comedy laughter settles all arguments.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #594507
#59. Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her dear dog a bone.
Though the cupboard was bare,
When she focused elsewhere
Her heart overflowed with fun!

Kristen McKee

Mckee Quotes #603613
#60. A distant cousin sent me some genealogy report on my father's side, and it's sort of what I suspected. Coal miners for generations ... four or maybe five generations.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #607961
#61. Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #611623
#62. 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

Mckee Quotes #612185
#63. There are different definitions of love, and one of the most wonderful definitions of love is to allow somebody to be.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #613687
#64. I think I've learnt a lot about bullying and how to deal with bullying and how to get over that and to just be yourself and forget the haters.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #623227
#65. All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #632229
#66. Never sleep with anybody who has more problems than you do.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #654949
#67. How does anyone know from moment to moment what to say or do next until he senses the reaction to what he just did? He doesn't know. Life is always action/reaction. No monologues. No prepared speeches. An improvisation no matter how we mentally rehearse our big moment.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #658785
#68. Of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #669074
#69. When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #674329
#70. I was one of those kids who found it difficult to eat anything that looked like an animal.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #685854
#71. The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #696316
#72. I love writing with Adam Lambert. He's really funny and very fun, he's a great friend.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #697084
#73. I think the difference between a good song and a great song is ... honestly, I think the lyrics, because if you have a really solid melody and solid track and everything is there but then the lyric is just okay, then you've got a good song.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #705672
#74. An image system is a strategy of motifs, a category of imagery embedded in the film that repeats in sight and sound from beginning to end with persistence and great variation, but with equally great subtlety, as a subliminal communication to increase the depth and complexity of aesthetic emotion.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #708046
#75. Usually I can go for three or four weeks and then I start to bake cakes or make jewellery and I think, 'hang on a minute, I'm obviously bored rigid. I need to get back out there.'

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #714447
#76. Every host in Hollywood has made that mistake: "Let's invite some comedy writers to the party! That'll brighten things up." Sure ... till the paramedics arrive.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #731370
#77. Today our children are our reflection. Tomorrow they will be our shadows.

Maralee McKee

Mckee Quotes #742573
#78. I like to go to the movies at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery. They do this thing in The Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood where everybody sits out on the grass and they project movies and it's very romantic and very old-school Hollywood, so I love that.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #750543
#79. I love that, even after jumping through hoops forever, I can still get that buzz, that hook. That's very healthy, but it's bittersweet, too, because if you don't get the part, you have to deal with the disappointment. I don't think I'll ever negotiate those peaks and troughs wholly healthily.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #761340
#80. God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #762153
#81. Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #781664
#82. I don't feel comfortable talking about my private life, and some people in my private life don't feel comfortable about me talking about it. So I don't.

Gina McKee

Mckee Quotes #789234
#83. I have a reoccurring dream that I'm in the ocean in New Zealand and everything is completely upside down, because it's on the other side of the planet.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #798813
#84. Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the opposite, posing questions and opening situations.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #802385
#85. If you can take it to the next level and really tell an interesting story in a unique and fresh way, then I feel like that's a great song.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #817231
#86. All fine films, novels, and plays, through all shades of the comic and the tragic, entertain when they give the audience a fresh model of life empowered with an affective meaning.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #823056
#87. When I moved to Seattle in fourth grade, I joined the Seattle Girls' Choir. It's a world-class choir, and we competed, toured Europe, and went and sang at the Vatican, so it was a really awesome experience to have that young.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #830159
#88. The daydreamy hypothetical that floats through the mind, opening the door to the imagination where everything and anything is possible.

- Story, Robert McKee

Audrey Godwin

Mckee Quotes #837558
#89. When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #837677
#90. Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #843861
#91. 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.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #856992
#92. When society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #858473
#93. I love really kitschy bad movies. Showgirls is one of my favorites. I saw House of Versace and died. I'm a big fan of made-for-TV movies because those are instant classics, naturally.

Bonnie McKee

Mckee Quotes #860517
#94. Y'know, it's not that we need equality. Because everyone's already equal, it's just that a ton of idiots lost the memo. Indeed, everyone just needs to be TREATED like the equal they already are.

Ellie Rose McKee

Mckee Quotes #862221
#95. Stories are the currency of human relationships.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #862632
#96. The way football is being played currently, that I have seen, it's dangerous. It's dangerous and it could impact their long-term mental health. You only get one brain.

Ann McKee

Mckee Quotes #869321
#97. Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives ... Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #872547
#98. Not all fiction writers are evil, just the ones good at their job. After all, it's not a decent book if it can't make you cry.

Ellie Rose McKee

Mckee Quotes #879161
#99. Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.

Robert McKee

Mckee Quotes #894347
#100. It doesn't matter who you come from. It matters who you become.

Suzanne Young

Mckee Quotes #907037

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