Screenwriters Quotes

• You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff, that's it.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Car, Cliffs, Like You

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• If you're just creative, you'll always have to rely on technical people. If you're creative and technical, you're unstoppable.

  Robert Rodriguez

  Creativity, People, Creative

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• Tagore once said - art has to be beautiful, but, before that, it has to be truthful.

  Ritwik Ghatak

  Beautiful, Art, Truth

  "Cinema and I" by Ritwik Ghatak, (pp. 75), 1987.

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• Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.

  Buster Keaton

  Funny, Humorous, Long

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.

  Sam Shepard

  Motivational, Moving On, Success

  "Remembering Sam Shepard: The Pulitzer-Winning Playwright and Author's 10 Best Quotes on Writing, Love and Life" by Olivia Ladd, parade.com. July 31, 2017.

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• When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.

  Sergio Leone

  Funny, Movie, Humorous

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• A lot of college graduates approach me about becoming screenwriters. I tell them, 'Do not become a screenwriter, become a journalist,' because journalists go into worlds that are not their own. Kids who go to Hollywood write coming-of-age stories for their first scripts, about what happened to them when they were sixteen. Then they write the summer camp script. At the age of twenty-three they haven't produced anything, and that's the end of the career.

  Nora Ephron

  Summer, Writing, Kids

  "Nora on Hollywood: In Her Own Words", www.hollywoodreporter.com. July 10, 2012.

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• I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

  Julia Cameron

  Morning, Writing, Character

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• 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

  Reading, Advice, Competition

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• It's very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children's books to journalism - any kind of writing - and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I'd written.

  Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

  Running, Children, Couple

  "Naomi Foner and the Importance of Being Earnest". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 22, 2014.

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• I counted it up once. I think I have written 45 full screenplays. Of those, maybe 15 have been shot, in some form. That's a pretty good track record, but it's not 100%. It is frustrating that, as a screenwriter, I've seen all those movies and they don't exist in the real world. They're juts inside my head and on those pages.

  John August

  Real, Thinking, Track

  Source: collider.com

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• I think what's important for kids to know is that your decisions here on earth matter, your behavior matters and how you treat other people matters.

  Matt Damon

  Inspirational, Children, Kids

  "Matt Damon: I Want to 'Raise My Four Girls to Be Strong Women' " by Jeanne Wolf, parade.com. October 21, 2010.

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• Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple

  Gene Wilder

  Funny, Humorous, Directors

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• I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.

  Werner Herzog

  Believe, Directors, Common

  "Grizzly Man", 2006.

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• Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Self, Novelists

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.804, Penguin

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• The nation which once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production, is now told that it is achieved by squalor.

  Ayn Rand

  Greatness, Novelists, Philosopher

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.382, Hamilton Books

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• 

  As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.

  Quentin Tarantino

  Truth, Writing, Character

  "The Quentin Tarantino race debate isn't black and white" by Steve Rose, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2015.

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• Time is a precious thing. Never waste it.

  Gene Wilder

  Inspirational, Directors, Waste

  "Fictional character: Willy Wonka". "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory", www.imdb.com. 1971.

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• Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

  John Hughes

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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• I am. I think. I will.

  Ayn Rand

  Thinking, Novelists, Philosopher

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Anthem”, p.46, Xist Publishing

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• What did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny?' 'Make yourself at home?' 'Marry my daughter?' You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons.

  Gene Wilder

  Daughter, Home, Simple

  "Fictional character: Jim". "Blazing Saddles", www.imdb.com. 1974.

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• Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.

  Ruth Gordon

  Inspirational, Motivational, Strength

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• Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness- happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you're lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.

  Adela Rogers St. Johns

  Love, Inspirational, Happiness

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• Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

  Jim Jarmusch

  Inspirational, Music, Dream

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If a story doesn't give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage.

  Samuel Fuller

  Couple, Giving, Garbage

  Samuel Fuller, Christa Fuller, Jerome Rudes (2002). “A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking”, Knopf

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