Quotes About Writing Scripts

#1. I was always writing scripts, and I had made several shorts, before and after film school. But I worked a variety of temp positions over the years.

Geoffrey S. Fletcher

#2. I spent as much time writing proposals in '98 and '99 as I did writing scripts.

Mark Millar

#3. I'd like to start writing scripts. I think I'd probably be inclined to write a very dark comedy or a tragic romance. As a kid, I used to write really dark stuff.

Jessica Biel

#4. When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.

Aaron Sorkin

#5. Writing scripts is a laborious job that can be a real pain.

Shane Black

#6. As a kid, I was just writing scripts and taking whatever film classes I could in college.

Damien Chazelle

#7. I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.

Todd Phillips

#8. When I retired, I was at an in-between age. I wasn't a child anymore, I wasn't really a woman yet, and they weren't really writing scripts for that age.

Mary Badham

#9. [Writing scripts] I'm not looking to jump in and make super mainstream movies. I still like to make movies that I like to see.

Rob Zombie

#10. And they were writing scripts where Christine had hit the glass ceiling. And I always thought Christine would never hit the glass ceiling. I thought her dreams would take her. Maybe her dreams wouldn't take her where she wanted, but she still had her dreams.

Sharon Gless

#11. In writing scripts now, having made a film, I'm much more conscious of what it means to shoot and edit a movie, and that affects the writing.

Josh Radnor

#12. I get a lot of 'Oh, you've been gone.' I wasn't gone. Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't working and collecting checks. I just wasn't singing and doing videos. I do a lot of other things, like I said, like writing scripts and stuff like that. I write for other artists.

Tionne Watkins

#13. When I was in school, I was always writing scripts and dressing up as characters. I'd constantly be that guy who'd get up on stage. I used to write imaginary TV shows, like soap operas, for fun.

Chris Lilley

#14. There's the same percentage of genius happening in both genders, but there's less women writing scripts and out there looking for the job.

Dan Harmon

#15. We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.

Viola Davis

#16. For years I was doing the excruciating weightlifting of writing scripts - but then I stayed thin and someone else got all the muscles.

Shane Black

#17. 'The Glass Menagerie' by Tennessee Williams is a great play. I had to read it for school when I was younger, but I started writing scripts after that. That's what got me into writing.

Jake T. Austin

#18. I enjoy writing scripts. I can find out what happens. With an outline, I feel like I'm doing an architectural diagram of something.

Neil Gaiman

#19. My understanding of films was just as much as any young girl who watches Bollywood films. I had no idea about the whole process of filmmaking, about dialogue writing, scripts, screenplay etc. I had probably gone to two or three film shoots in my childhood.

Rani Mukerji

#20. I don't like to write any music to a script. Experience has taught me that's generally a waste of time.

Cliff Martinez

#21. I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood.

Manuel Puig

#22. The writing of the script is a continual process. There's the first draft and then many, many re-writes here and there.

Abdellatif Kechiche

#23. Great writing attracts great actors. It attracts money. Without a great script, you have nothing.

Andy Garcia

#24. Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.

Aaron Sorkin

#25. In the end, whether I write the script or, in this case, somebody else did, there's a point where you let it go when you're making a movie. You just have to. The thing that you shoot is not what you imagined in your head - it never is exactly that. And it shouldn't be.

Todd Haynes

#26. When I'm not acting, I'm writing, building an inventory of scripts. Even if they sit on the shelf, I just keep stacking them up.

Dan Aykroyd

#27. When I write my scripts, there's a point at which if I'm not starting to see them visually, I feel like I'm kind of cheating. So my scripts are laden with a lot of visual description, which makes them not so much fun to read - I kind of weigh them down.

Todd Haynes

#28. Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because, well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk.

Gene Wilder

#29. I started writing my original scripts replete with kings and queens who lived in the cities and did not want their children to marry servants. They had enough money to throw around and their lives never ended well.

S.A. David

#30. I have been writing songs and poems since I was a little girl. I started writing short scripts, which evolved into the idea for a book.

Hilary Duff

#31. Most scripts are written to be green lit. They're not written to be acted. And a lot of writers with the greatest intention in the world don't write for actors. They don't understand the architecture of what an actor needs to get from point A to point B.

Laura Linney

#32. 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

#33. And when I first started writing, it was literally in acting classes. And what would happen is now it's really easy to get scripts and stuff but back then, you know, oftentimes you'd buy the novelization to a movie if you wanted to get an idea of what the scene, you know what happened in the scene.

Quentin Tarantino

#34. 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

#35. Double-check your voice mail message. Listen to your on-hold words and music. Write welcoming scripts for your telephone team. Pay attention to the music in your office and lobby areas. Make sure what your customers hear sounds good.

Ron Kaufman

#36. Try everything; listen to everyone. Follow no one. You are your own story guru!

Jeff Lyons

#37. I'm an impatient guy and tend not to like to stay with one thing for a long time. I'll never be able to write as many scripts as I did for "Felicity" or "Alias" ever again. I'm just too impatient these days. I want to get on to the next project.

J.J. Abrams

#38. Strangely, I always have a lot of cut scenes. I keep writing shorter and shorter scripts, thinking that this time, I'll get all my scenes in.

David Twohy

#39. He pointed to the board where the word 'alliteration' had been written in handwriting far better than mine, which on good days looks like it came from the hand of a blind doctor writing his own morphine scripts in an earthquake.

Robert Wilder

#40. I did theater for a few years while I was in New York, but it was tough having to perform scripts worse than what I knew I could write.

Zach Braff

#41. Most of the time I've worked with directors who write their own scripts. The story is more important to me than the part. The project of the film has always been more important to me.

Catherine Deneuve

#42. To sit down at a computer every day and write a script is commendable. I don't have the patience for it, but I have some fantastic ideas.

Shiloh Fernandez

#43. Hundreds of people who've never written before send in 'Dr. Who' scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

Douglas Adams

#44. For years I've wanted to work with this guy, so to actually write at the top of my scripts "Empress, Script by Mark Millar, Art by Stuart Immonen" is an absolute pleasure.

Mark Millar

#45. Writing is a hard gig, and it's hard to convey a lot. That's why scripts tend to be a little bit overwritten.

Mel Gibson

#46. It may take hundreds of pages before you begin to get a handle on the craft of writing, and your first scripts may not work. The next five to twenty may not either. However, the ones that do work owe everything to the ones that didn't.

Geoffrey S. Fletcher

#47. If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something.

Bill Murray

#48. At the end of the day you do have to write a short novel beforehand, called a script, before you can make a movie.

Louis Garrel

#49. I always write as I like to write, and I've been thinking about it because I honestly didn't realize how different my stuff is, until I started looking at other people's scripts as a producer.

William Monahan

#50. Pilot scripts are particularly difficult to write because you have to introduce all the characters without it feeling like a series of introductions.

Tina Fey

#51. Take a favorite trick of yours and write a 'gestures script' how could you improve clarity [using gestures].

Roberto Giobbi

#52. When I get a script and do my work, and then show up on set and work, it's the same zone that I'm in when I'm in front of a canvas, or when I'm writing a story about one of my paintings, or when I'm playing music. Whatever I'm doing at any given time, it's the same exact zone.

Michael Marisi Ornstein

#53. In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for 'True Detective' was one of them.

Nic Pizzolatto

#54. I've sold scripts in the past, and also a TV pilot that didn't get made, to Fox. But yeah, I've been writing for a while.

Michael Jai White

#55. When you finish writing the scripts they have time to take a breath and think about everything. There's just a little more time to think. Network does not allow for that.

Alex Graves

#56. Maybe that's when bad scripts are written, when you choose the theme first. I consider that I've something to say when I've thought of a person, a moment, a single beat of the heart, that I think is true and interesting, and therefore should be seen.

Russell T. Davies

#57. I don't look at scripts. I just write them.

James Cameron

#58. Let's make movies, not deals. Let's write movies, not scripts.

Paula Wagner

#59. 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

#60. I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent.

Peter Dinklage

#61. I write scripts by myself. It's not for everybody. It's someone's personal work. I need to be in love with the subject.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#62. Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.

Dick Van Dyke

#63. Yeah, the main goal when I'm writing [movie scripts] is to entertain myself. It's supposed to be funny, but then a funny idea can be turned into something else.

Quentin Dupieux

#64. 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

#65. You know, you should start to be in plays and things like that. Write some scripts. If you're an artist and you truly don't believe what you're spittin' then you need to really seriously be an actor then.

Chuck D

#66. 'Gone-Away World' was a shotgun blast, an explosion out of the box I'd put myself into writing film scripts. 'Tigerman' is shorter, tighter, more crafted.

Nick Harkaway

#67. I don't think the written word is important in movies anymore and the really great movies are done by great directors who in many cases write their own scripts. I think it's gotten to be more of a visual thing than an audible thing.

Anita Loos

#68. With the right tools, you can write anything ...

Jeff Lyons

#69. All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process.

Tom Stoppard

#70. I have no interest in ever making a movie I didn't write. If they were going to take my house away, then I guess I might have to. But my agent knows not to even bother sending me the scripts.

John Waters

#71. I haven't had a chance to pick up a good book in a long time, because I've been either reading scripts or learning them or writing them. And so, by the time the day is done, I usually just want to click on The Bachelor and fall asleep. But I gravitate toward biographies and things like that.

Justin Theroux

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts.

Jesse Eisenberg

#75. 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

#76. You're there right through the match, thinking all the time, making it up as you go along. We don't have anybody write our scripts. You're basically presenting to the people watching at home off the top of your head.

Jill Douglas

#77. 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

#78. When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.

J. Michael Straczynski

#79. 'Police Story' had some of the best writing on television, and one reason for that is because most of the scripts were based on real cases.

Michael Mann

#80. 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

#81. Steven wrote to me today, saying, 'Don't you feel like sticking your head out of the window and yelling, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!!!"' Yes, absolutely. Solidarity. Fear is always the same. Different worries with different scripts, but the same baseline fear.

Russell T. Davies

#82. You have to write a lot of scripts to get any scripts that are worth making.

Judd Apatow

#83. I have, for a few years, been writing comedy prose - short pieces for my blog - because I found it to be a good way to write while I was on a TV show. It was different enough from my scripts that it felt like a break, but it still was comedy and very fun. I like to do comedy!

Megan Amram

#84. I have enjoyed writing my own stuff, and it's been a privilege to be able to scrap some money together to be able to make films from my own scripts.

Lisa Cholodenko

#85. Comic scripts are full-on collaborations, not only with your artist, but your editors and colorists and letterers and PR folks, etc. Writing comics reminds me of my days as a journalist, working on a staff of fun, smart people.

Duane Swierczynski

#86. As a director who does not like to write, I am always looking for scripts that I can contribute to through directing. I don't want to do the same thing that the writer is doing; I want to add an angle or highlight a theme.

Jen McGowan

#87. I write my scripts short and they develop on the set, which I have found a far better premise both economically and practically.

W.C. Fields

#88. With everything I've done from "Jackie Brown" on, I got really into really writing more prose in the - in what you're calling the stage directions, all right. And consequently my scripts have gotten bigger and bigger, and got to "Kill Bill" volume 1 and 2.

Quentin Tarantino

#89. We've done things that are faster at times, but it's definitely different when we direct all the episodes because it's like we have to write them all, then shoot them all, then edit them all. So we have to just get ahead on those scripts basically.

Mark Duplass

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

Carlton Cuse

#91. 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

#92. I drank in his smell, I'd missed him so much more than I'd realised. Despite dreaming of him every night, besides my secret habit of writing Honour Hussain in curled scripts on every scrap piece of paper, I surprised myself by how much I needed him.

Ruth Ahmed