Quotes About Script Writing

#1. When my film went to the Venice Film Festival and won the best script writing, the jury [prize], it didn't go to my head. I know how many black filmmakers that I am operating with whose name will never be mentioned. But I'm part of them in that silent existence.

Haile Gerima

#2. Much to my surprise, there's a sense for people in the cable industry that fiction writers might actually be good at script writing. You can write dialogue!

Matthew Specktor

#3. I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted.

Steve Coogan

#4. With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.

Emma Donoghue

#5. Everything is in a script for a reason, and only by being part of a writing team (or writing it yourself), do you really understand the intention of every beat.

Peter Jackson

#6. To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

#7. Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature. I've thought about this. Conceptually, what I'd like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script.

Phil Collins

#8. We should all live as though someone is writing a book about us.

J.R. Rim

#9. The way I sometimes approach my work, when I look at a script for the first time, is to identify what the archetypes are and what the writing is trying to do in that context.

Sarah Gadon

#10. When Kirk dies it was very emotional and very strange, in the moment and all the way through the process. I'd read it in the script and I'd always be struck by what I'd just done and what we were doing, and that this was my childhood hero and I was writing his death.

Ronald D. Moore

#11. A script arrived, and on the front cover - scrawled really big, as if it were a book report - is 'Django Unchained, written by Quentin Tarantino.' And I thought, 'Well, no art department came up with this; this is Quentin's writing.'

Dennis Christopher

#12. 'Scalped' No. 1 was only the third comic script I'd ever written. I really learned a lot about writing on the fly with that series.

Jason Aaron

#13. The Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century.

Geoffrey Nunberg

#14. We played more rock music when we were writing the script. 'Renegade'. All of the Styx songs. All of the old '70's and '80's music, that's the stuff that's pounding in the background while we were doing this stuff. It's a part of those movies.

Todd Farmer

#15. Always care for the writing part first. Every good film project starts with good writing. If you have a good script, everything else follows. Writing is crucial.

Giovanna Cau

#16. It's much harder to write a script that involves two people in a single location than 20 people in 30 different locations.

Michael Haneke

#17. Now I'm doing a film festival for kids and writing a script about a kidnapped journalist in Afghanistan.

Olivia Wilde

#18. Of course you want to be good and you want to do the best you can, but I am inspired by great writing. If there's something about the script, that's what I go for, although I know that that doesn't always translate because sometimes it's about the vision of the director.

Sally Hawkins

#19. Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn't been difficult to stick to the script on 'Mad Men.' The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don't think there's room - or need - for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway.

Rich Sommer

#20. I've worked with genius performers. Sometimes they created great work with a bad script ... but not often. Play it safe: write well.

Jerry Juhl

#21. As much as I thought the end of 'Friday Night Lights' was a really great ending, I was one of those people who wanted to make it into a movie. Even though it ultimately didn't work to do that movie, I did work with some of the other writers and by myself writing a script for that.

Jason Katims

#22. Whether I'm writing the script, or someone else writes the initial draft, I'm always an actor's director first. I always try to listen to them a lot and try to put their voices into their character.

Dito Montiel

#23. It takes so long to write a script, thinking to yourself, "Am I wasting my time? Am I putting everything into this thing that maybe just won't ever exist?" I always think, God, acting is so much easier. At least for acting you have the source material already.

Jason Schwartzman

#24. If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way.

Rian Johnson

#25. I would love to produce a film. I have written a script and am in the process of writing another, so maybe it will happen down the road. I would love to do a film in Africa.

Judi Shekoni

#26. I'm not Akira Kurosawa. He used to write ... He used to write a completely new spec script over a couple of nights. I'm not like that. It takes me a long time to put a film together that I want to make.

Duncan Jones

#27. Never say you can't be a writer or a script writer, remember how well, characters in your dreams said their dialogues.

Dipesh Nepal

#28. In writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars,' I had the freedom to go beyond the original script and add asides, soliloquys and even new scenes. The main characters all get a soliloquy or two - or in Luke's case, several.

Ian Doescher

#29. What I ended up doing was kind of crafting an idea for a story, presenting it to a writer - a dear friend of mine, Brad Mirman - and he ended up writing a beautiful script. I should've done that a lot earlier.

Kiefer Sutherland

#30. I improvise whenever I feel it's important, or whenever I think that something's there. It's nice to have a script that's so well-written that I don't have to improvise. I mean, I used to have to re-write whole movies; this is kind of nice.

Bill Murray

#31. I think there's something strange about writing a script I've written many, many scripts - dozens and dozens of scripts - and every time I start one, I think to myself: 'why in the world do I think I know how to do this?'

Brian Helgeland

#32. What's fun about the story development at Pixar is it's a journey. You don't just write a script and then that's the movie you make. It's just constant evolution and being open to that and that collaboration with the voice actors and with the artists and animators at Pixar.

John Lasseter

#33. Writing, yeah. Me and my friend Scott Bloom just finished the first rough draft of a script. It's taken us three years to do, but we finally got a first draft. And we'll see whatever happens with that.

Ethan Suplee

#34. I wrote this script in 2003, when I was a humble college student, sitting in my boxers and writing in my dorm room. And I came up with the idea of writing an action-based 'Snow White,' with this kind of Huntsman character as kind of a way in. So, that's something I'm sort of proud of.

Evan Daugherty

#35. For all of my class projects, I somehow turned it into a commercial parody or put on plays. My whole thing was seeing things from a big picture, from beginning to middle to end: making a costume, doing voices, writing a script, making it all happen.

Noel Wells

#36. Writing film scripts is the hardest thing in the world. A script has to go to five or six drafts, and you need the feedback of other people and to keep coming back with a fresh eye, honing it down.

Gurinder Chadha

#37. Arranging an official dinner in an embassy is a little like writing a script for a play. The prolog is the guest list, often the most difficult part of the whole creative operation.

Letitia Baldrige

#38. In Canada, I've had success raising money. I think I was fortunate enough. But today, I would have to write a very, very bad script not to be financed for the next one. I'm assured at least of the next one, but you're always [only] as good as your last film. I think it's true for anyone.

Philippe Falardeau

#39. I've done too many stupid things for there not to be movies made about me when I'm dead, so I might as well write the script.

George Michael

#40. Writing a screen play: One page of an average screen play equals about one minute of screen time. Therefore, the script for a typical feature film should be about 100 pages long. In fact, many studios and producers won't look at screen plays that are much longer.

John Griesemer

#41. Writing is the light of imagination playing over shadow of thoughts.

Khaled Talib

#42. I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but (for me, at least) there doesn't seem to be any other way to start writing a script.

Michael Arndt

#43. On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.

Marc Forster

#44. If you sat down and you wrote a script, you may write something that's way beyond what you've ever seen me do, but if you thought of me to do it, I would be flattered to be asked to do something other than be wise.

Morgan Freeman

#45. Everything I do with my day is related to Superwoman. I'm either doing conference calls or writing a script or reading a script, editing a video, shooting a video.

Lilly Singh

#46. I'm writing a film called 'Bug.' It's an original script, and it's not about killer insects. It's a thriller set in a high school. The bug of the title refers to a surveillance device.

Wes Craven

#47. You're responsible for your own character to a degree, because when it comes to the final draft of the script, you might say, "Well, I think maybe I could add this here, add that there." But I find that I write just as well for the other characters as I do for myself. I think.

Charlie Day

#48. When I started writing the script I thought that maybe someone else would direct it, but then I started to fall for it so much that I left the other project and I put all my time on The German Doctor.

Lucia Puenzo

#49. The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It's easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer.

Steven Moffat

#50. When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. All right, you're a stand-up comedian, can you write us a script? That's not fair. That's like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I'm a really good cook, they'd say, "OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?"

Mitch Hedberg

#51. I really get fired up with female protagonists. I can really feel the difference in myself when I am writing a script that has a woman at the center.

Linda Woolverton

#52. Write your script. When you see things you don't want, don't think about them, write about them, talk about them, push against them, or join groups that focus on the don't wants ... remove your attention from don't wants.. and place them on do wants.

Rhonda Byrne

#53. I write the script; nobody sees it, not the people that put the money in the picture. I cast who I want, and make the film. That's why I've always felt the only thing standing between me and greatness, is me. There's no excuse for me not to be great except that I'm not.

Woody Allen

#54. I remember reading the script for 'Dangerous Liaisons' and thinking that I could quite happily spend the rest of my life watching this film; the story and the writing were so wonderful.

Stephen Frears

#55. I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.

Wadah Khanfar

#56. I don't start writing a script until I can see it all in my head, then it's a matter of getting it down in white heat.

J. Michael Straczynski

#57. I was very happy sitting alone at a dining room table, writing a script.

Conrad Hall

#58. Max never intended to be messy with his writing, which he could read just fine, years later if necessary, even if his teachers couldn't. He merely found that his active mind tended to move too fast for his hand to keep up with.

Sol Luckman

#59. It's rare that a good writer will sit down and write a good script. Writers are greedy too, and they don't want to work without getting paid. But quality will find its way out.

Richard Gere

#60. Rock is all about writing your own script; it's all about pioneering.

Courtney Love

#61. You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script.

John Taylor Gatto

#62. As hard as you try to write a good script and you have great intentions, this alchemy has to occur.

Carlton Cuse

#63. I don't want to take all the time. I just want to do what you wrote and let me go from there. I don't want to miss something. You know, I'm not really a writer per se, but I can write. But I can't put a script together like they can.

Jackee Harry

#64. I long to create something
that can't be used to keep us passive:
I want to write
a script about plumbing, how every pipe
is joined
to every other.

Adrienne Rich

#65. I wish I was one of those people who could write script after script and pages and pages. I can only aspire to do that.

Fred Armisen

#66. On movies, I like to involve the cast in the writing of the script. I like to have a rehearsal period, after which I do the last draft, which gives me a chance to incorporate anything the actors have come up with during the rehearsal period, so I'm very inclusive as a writer.

John Cleese

#67. When you're doing an animated series, you tend to pitch storyboards. You write a script and then you draw a comic version of that script and put it up on big boards, and then you pitch it to a big room of executives and writers.

Alex Hirsch

#68. I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative. Like actually writing a script, or writing a book. But the awful truth is that I ... probably can't!

Hugh Grant

#69. Usually when I write a script, I have in mind some real people that I'm writing about, who don't always act in the film afterward.

Abbas Kiarostami

#70. The script for 'Thirteen' is tight, and not because of the now-famous six day writing spree, but more because it started out as 15 pages longer.

Catherine Hardwicke

#71. I can picture certain things in my mind, while writing the script, but then I can also tell that everyone else might be a little confused about what it's supposed to look like at the end of the day. But it all works out. I find a way.

Rob Zombie

#72. I thought one way to try to hold on to the power was to write the script myself. That way, I could say to filmmakers, "I'm not asking you to hire me unseen. I'm just saying, 'Here's my script. Can we work together?'" So that worked out well.

Emma Donoghue

#73. I would be sad if it ended now. It's been the best job I've had by a long shot, especially creatively because the writing is so good. Every week I get the script and I laugh out loud and get excited for the different stuff we get to do.

Sarah Chalke

#74. I feel like, as a filmmaker, I'm at my strongest when I write the script and when it comes from me, out of whole cloth. My best work has always been self-generated.

David Ayer

#75. I would like to do a lot more of it, I feel comfortable with it and basically it's all in the writing. I'm not a personality type actor, I need a good script in order to be funny, but it's definitely something that I like doing.

Ray Liotta

#76. I always think that the deal, once I do the script, sort of the experience I go through writing, which is everything you can imagine, but I always think it's the one thing I can do when I'm directing is say is that it's all about the actors, that I can say, 'We're all here to serve the actors.'

James L. Brooks

#77. I handed in a script last year and the studio didn't change one word. The word they didn't change was on page 87.

Steve Martin

#78. Knowing that Gene and Morgan were playing those roles made it much easier to put the script together-we knew who we were writing it for. It took some mystery away.

Stephen Hopkins

#79. Decisions are the privilege we've been granted to have a hand in penning the script of our lives. And in the writing, the question is not the availability of the paper or the pen. The question is the wisdom to use them rightly.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#80. Hollywood is just so strange. It's like, everyone has a whole bunch of stuff boiling away and whichever one happens first, happens. That one, we're still in the process of, you know, trying to write the script. So, it's still very early stages at this point. Yeah.

James Wan

#81. I like the discipline of writing a script. You can't go into the character's head - you have to find these creative ways to help externalize what they're thinking.

Gillian Flynn

#82. Writing is getting killed by too many chefs. Back in the Bogart days, it started with great scripts. You had a writer, and he wrote a script, and that was your movie. I think that's been watered down a bit lately.

Peter Dinklage

#83. With every script, I write a note to my collaborator that says: 'I write full script. But see it as a guide. You take us where we need to go any way you see fit. I tried to write something specifically for you. If you agree with my choices, fine. If not, you do what you have to do.'

Brian Michael Bendis

#84. Diablo Cody wasn't writing a script about a 16-year girl that got an abortion. She was writing a script about a 16-year old girl that got pregnant, decided to have the baby and give it to a young yuppy uptight couple for adoption. That's what the movie is about.

Ellen Page

#85. When you write the script, you're home in a room by yourself, and you're writing, and there's no connection with the real performing world. So you get a lot of things wrong and make a lot of mistakes and make a lot of bad choices.

Woody Allen

#86. Yeah, well I can't see a situation where I wouldn't at least re-write as a director something I was going to direct. At the moment, I wouldn't direct anything that I hadn't written. I can now say, as everybody else says, that it all depends on the script.

William Monahan

#87. You call this a script? Give me a couple of 5,000-dollar-a-week writers and I will write it myself.

Joe Pasternak

#88. Sometimes I dream that I'm working; that's awful. When you awaken after a big, surprising dream, you feel it's very interesting. When you sit and write it down, you realize it's a very poor script. But I may find ideas while dozing.

Michel Ocelot

#89. You define your own life. Don't let other people write your script.

Oprah Winfrey

#90. I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

#91. Take that rage, put it on a page, take the page to the stage, blow the roof off the place.

The Script

#92. Writing a great script - not just a good one, but a great one - is almost an impossible task.

Michael Arndt

#93. Unless you loosen the hold that your past has on you, your future will unfold in much the same way ... it is time to begin writing a new script that accurately reflects the beautiful, powerful, and worthy being you are.

David Simon

#94. I was at home waiting for projects. I was on Parenthood and there was one season left, and I was thinking, "What's next?" I'm at this age where I'm trying to write my own script, and they sent this over and I decided to put myself on tape.

Ray Romano

#95. I never had a movie that I wanted to do turned down in my whole life. I always write the script first so it speaks for itself.

Steve Martin

#96. Really I'm just an actor. The only difference between me and those cats in Hollywood is that I write my own script.

Jimi Hendrix

#97. I wrote a script. I actually enjoyed writing it more than acting. It's about the Irish rebellion of 1920, which is a fascinating period and place for me.

Tom Berenger

#98. That was, in writing the 'Twilight' script I had about five weeks to write that. I'd taken about a month to write the outline and then it was slam into a script and write it down fast because the writer's strike was looming.

Melissa Rosenberg

#99. I start casting early in the writing process, so I can tailor the script to the gifts of the actors.

Judd Apatow

#100. In most of my films I write the music into the script. I'm listening to songs and lyrics that empower the themes of the film. There's a lot of Indigenous music that has not been heard widely and I love the idea of giving that music to the rest of the world.

Warwick Thornton