Quotes About Screenplays

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. I'm very keen. Adaptations of other people's work, too. I got fascinated by the adaptation process, so I think that'd be a really interesting task. I would happily write original screenplays as well. I think it's become one of my favorite genres.

Emma Donoghue

#9. I've come to find more satisfaction and enjoyment in writing screenplays over the years because that's what I do primarily now.

Diablo Cody

#10. 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 But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels ...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

#11. When I moved to Los Angeles, I wrote spec screenplays. I was really poor, and I thought I was just gonna do this for a while to make a little money so I could write novels. I thought movies were a second-class art form. I condescended to it - I didn't know enough to know it was really gonna be hard.

Stephen Gaghan

#12. 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

#13. I just really loved films and thought I should be writing screenplays.

Leonard Mlodinow

#14. 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

#15. I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.

Cary Fukunaga

#16. My screenplays are very detailed. The reason they're detailed ... you have to think on your feet. You have to be ready to change because there are no such things as ideal conditions.

Deepa Mehta

#17. 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

#18. Most screenplays I receive are boring, and some are straight-out bad.

Max Von Sydow

#19. Well, you just know, as a writer, I didn't really write one of the five best screenplays of the year. There were lots of brilliant screenplays; I was just one of the lucky ones who got nominated.

Patrick Marber

#20. God is a freaking character, with enough foibles, tantrums, and paradoxical behaviors to supply a thousand screenplays. But who do you cast?

Walter Kirn

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. I wrote several screenplays over the years to really polish my craft and learn from my mistakes.

Gabriel Campisi

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

Charlie Kaufman

#25. Earlier in my career, I needed to be the writer, casting director, set designer, leading man, and producer. I've been eliminating a lot of those jobs. I'm an executive producer right now. I still get to pick the best screenplays.

Danny Meyer

#26. I do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays.

Charlie Kaufman

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

Ridley Scott

#30. And I've got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.

Neil LaBute

#31. 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

#32. Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer.

George Lucas

#33. I'm quite spontaneous in my decisions often. Your career is kind of what happens whilst you're busy developing other screenplays, and so it came out of the blue.

Joe Wright

#34. I write a number of screenplays, and I've never really come up with a part for a movie star.

Andrew Dominik

#35. The best way for a beginner to write for animation is to closely watch animated films, then read the screenplays for them afterwards.

Douglas Wood

#36. 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

#37. I'm attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don't.

Alexander Payne

#38. In books, you can just wallow in dialogue, and you can just wallow in written words. In screenplays, every line has to serve the purpose of the line that's implied before it and the line that's implied after it. Maybe five lines have to do the work of fifty lines.

Chuck Palahniuk

#39. In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting. If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.

James Patterson

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. I don't assume, because I can write screenplays, that I know how to write a novel. It's a very different world. There's a craft involved in storytelling, and it's a different kind of craft. But yes, someday I will do that. It just might be awhile.

Melissa Rosenberg

#43. I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

Michael Nesmith

#44. I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.

John Irving

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 'Juno' really changed things for me and I get a lot of screenplays come in now, but I like to self-generate and I like to kind of pursue my own ideas. And I think the more personal the better.

Jason Reitman

#48. I've only ever taken a playwriting class, but I like creative writing and writing screenplays.

Gia Coppola

#49. 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

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. All screenwriting books are bullshit, all. Watch movies, read screenplays. Let them be your guide.

Brian Koppelman

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. There are a lot of bad screenplays so if you write a good screenplay people are going to respond to it.

Quentin Tarantino

#56. If (when) she got back to her typewriter she'd begin these tongue-in-cheek screenplays over from the top, telling them with faith in the tale, not because every fantasy was absolutely true but because no reality ever was.

Clive Barker

#57. My God, there are so many mediocre screenplays out there.

Michael Arndt

#58. 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

#59. 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

#60. If I am a prolific writer and turn my hand, with what seems to some as indecent haste, from novels to screenplays to stage and radio plays, it is because there is so much to be said, so few of us to say it, and time runs out.

Fay Weldon

#61. I was never conscious of my screenplays having any acts. It's all bullshit.

John Milius

#62. Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director.

Tom Skerritt

#63. When I'm writing novels, even screenplays, it's never an actor I have in mind; it's always the version in my head of who the character is. Once somebody gets cast, I have to adjust a little bit to who they are.

Jonathan Tropper

#64. 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

#65. 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

#66. While I filmed the 'Walker, Texas Ranger' series for eight and a half years, I had never had much time to read, except for screenplays of the episodes.

Chuck Norris

#67. Screenplays aren't written to be read, they're written to be made into movies.

Edward Norton

#68. 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

#69. 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

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

Daniel Handler

#71. When I graduated college I needed to make money while I was pursuing acting, so I read screenplays and made a living writing coverage on them for studios.

Sasha Alexander

#72. 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

#73. I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.

Charlie Kaufman

#74. 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

#75. But the longer I'm in the business, you see a lot of times these screenplays have been rewritten 5 times and you're not really offending an author.

Edward Burns

#76. I think I would like to write screenplays, books, really anything.

Kara Hayward

#77. I started writing screenplays myself and eventually directing.

Peter Landesman

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

Albert Brooks

#79. I've written poetry since I was a kid. As the years went on, I got into writing stories and screenplays, but I always, always kept up with poetry as well.

Blake Jenner

#80. 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

#81. 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

#82. 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

#83. The first thing to look out for after your first big success are drugs and screenplays.

Richard Price

#84. Over the years, many producers have come and gone, and screenplays were written and abandoned. It's the Hollywood process. It's hard to get things done.

Lawrence Blume

#85. 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

#86. 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

#87. I love Hap and Leonard and plan to write more about them, but not exclusively about them. I have always worked in film, or since the eighties, but my screenplays - though I got paid and did screenplays for Ridley Scott and John Irvin and Mark Romanek - seldom got made.

Joe R. Lansdale

#88. I like movies. I've written screenplays as a sort of procrastination thing for me. Like I'll work for a couple months on this idea that's been kicking around and then like 30 pages in I'll just go try a novel because it's a lot easier. That's what I know. So why am I killing myself?

Colson Whitehead

#89. 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

#90. I already feel a bit annoyed at myself for writing screenplays. It's a bit, I don't know, model-singer-dancer-actress that went to a posh school. There's something too weirdly predictable about it.

Emily Mortimer

#91. In the past, I'll admit, I've enjoyed being compared to the protagonists in my screenplays.

Diablo Cody

#92. I'm developing some screenplays at the moment with my Australian producer.

Rachel Griffiths

#93. 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

#94. When I started writing screenplays, as early as I started writing anything, I hadn't seen any ordinary screenplays. I saw movies and figured out how I thought they should be written.

William Monahan

#95. I'm not writing novels, the screenplays are my novels, so I'm gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it'd almost be okay because I did it. It's there on the page.

Quentin Tarantino

#96. Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

Paul Schrader

#97. I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

Ray Bradbury

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

Charlie Kaufman

#99. For me, if Shakespeare was around today, he'd be writing screenplays - a big Hollywood movie.

Douglas Booth

#100. 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