Top 61 Quotes About Screenwriters
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. There's a lot for screenwriters to steal from songwriters, in terms of getting to the point.
Paul Thomas Anderson
#7. 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
#8. L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation.
Nick Cave
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. India needs better producers than screenwriters. No producer wants to invest in out-of-the way scripts.
Anurag Kashyap
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. Though Moneyball had the talents of screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin going for it, they weren't baseball insiders.
Brad Pitt
#20. 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
#21. Writers - all writers, even screenwriters - like to make their mark. I don't think many screenwriters can write. They pass as writers.
Elmore Leonard
#22. The screenwriters I know share a few personality traits and one of them is anxiety.
Tony Gilroy
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. I grew up in the Midwest; you don't know any screenwriters. It didn't seem like a realistic career possibility.
Diablo Cody
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. Is every writer's keyboard a spill magnet?
A.D. Posey
#36. If you don't think screenwriting is a work of art, good luck in your life without a soul.
A.D. Posey
#37. I think part of being a good screenwriter is being as concise as possible.
Eric Roth
#38. Drizzle happiness wherever you go.
A.D. Posey
#42. Great writers experience their dreams. They put them on paper, where others can read about them.
Ellen J. Barrier
#43. Sand lines my soul which is filled with the breath of the ocean.
A.D. Posey
#44. 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
#47. Try everything; listen to everyone. Follow no one. You are your own story guru!
Jeff Lyons
#48. Peace is when we look upon the world together.
A.D. Posey
#49. There is magic in the old and magic in the new; the trick is to successfully combine the two.
A.D. Posey
#50. 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
#52. Happiness is individualized. Don't box it in. Let it fly.
A.D. Posey
#53. Screenwriting is like poker; in the end, you have to go all in.
A.D. Posey
#54. You are the executive director and screenwriter of your life.
Eric Thomas
#55. You heard me cry long before I knew my voice.
A.D. Posey
#56. With the right tools, you can write anything ...
Jeff Lyons
#57. Novelist by day; screenwriter by night.
A.D. Posey
#58. Believe in people, they fly for a day. Teach them to believe in themselves, they soar for a lifetime.
A.D. Posey
#59. Of all the most devastating sounds in the universe, silence is the most powerful.
Gerard De Marigny
#60. 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
#61. 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
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