Robert McKee Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• We often put off doing something for as long as possible, then as we finally make the decision and step into the action, we're surprised by its relative ease. We're left to wonder why we dreaded it until we realize that most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.

  Robert McKee

  Long, Decision, Ease

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• What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.

  Robert McKee

  Inspirational, Thinking, Stories

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.25, Harper Collins

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• Don't be didactic - don't write about poverty. Write about poor people. When you dramatize their lives and let life and characters be your inspiration, you will express the 'idea' dynamically and without preaching.

  Robert McKee

  Inspiration, Writing, Character

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• Talent without craft is like fuel without an engine, it burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.

  Robert McKee

  Accomplish Nothing, Fuel, Crafts

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.28, Harper Collins

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• Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality.

  Robert McKee

  Art, Reality, Giving

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• In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

  Robert McKee

  Art, Liars, Lying

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• 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

  Integrity, Unfinished Work, Theatre

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75 percent or more of a writer's labor goes into designing the story designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought.

  Robert McKee

  Powerful, Heart, Maturity

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• Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.

  Robert McKee

  Lonely, Character, Mean

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• The principle of Creative Limitations calls for freedom within a circle of obstacles and restricted boundaries. Talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies. So we deliberately put obstacles in our path - barriers that will inspire us. We disciple ourselves as to what to do, while we're boundless as to how to do it.

  Robert McKee

  Inspiration, Creativity, Circles

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• The Business story is designed to trigger the listener to take an effective action. If it doesn't, the story fails.

  Robert McKee

  Stories, Action, Failing

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• Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

  Robert McKee

  Writing, Marathon, Sprint

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• Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.

  Robert McKee

  Slow Motion, Influence, Persuasion

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• Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I've stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate--the ritual often exhausts them.

  Robert McKee

  Laughter, Hate, Fall

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.

  Robert McKee

  Writing, Cake, Guarantees

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• Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.

  Robert McKee

  Stories, Life Is, Metaphor

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• When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.

  Robert McKee

  Spring, Writing, Choices

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• The universal erosion of values has lead to the universal erosion of story.

  Robert McKee

  Erosion, Stories, Universal

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• Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.

  Robert McKee

  Boredom, Suffering, Desire

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• Never sleep with anybody who has more problems than you do.

  Robert McKee

  Sleep, Advice, Problem

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• 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

  Smart, Book, People

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• The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.

  Robert McKee

  Sex, Law, Return

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• We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.

  Robert McKee

  Communication, Thinking, Talking

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• Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.

  Robert McKee

  Decision, Action, Willpower

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• Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.

  Robert McKee

  Creativity, Differences, Achievement

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