Quotes from Robert McKee

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

I cannot be a character in a bad movie. I can't be.

God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.

Life is chaotic and meaningless, and you have to find your meaning. You must find the answer, you can't just live. That's the point of story: helping you find your meaning in life.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

Life is absurd. But there is one meaningful thing, one inarguable thing, and that is that there is suffering. Fine writing helps alleviate that suffering – and anything that puts meaning and beauty into the world in the form of story, helps people to live with more peace and purpose and balance, is deeply worthwhile.

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

You do not keep the audience's interest by giving it information, but by withholding information ....

Dialogue concentrates meaning; conversation dilutes it.

Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.

in comedy laughter settles all argument ?? ?????????? ????? ???? ?? ???

Creativity isn't learning the right answers but asking the strongest questions.

Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality

As he chooses, he is.

When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost—and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl. —T. S. ELIOT

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

The mark of a master is to select only a few moments but give us a lifetime.

THE PRINCIPLE OF CREATIVE LIMITATION Limitation is vital. The first step toward a well-told story is to create a small, knowable world. Artists by nature crave freedom, so the principle that the structure/setting relationship restricts creative choices may stir the rebel in you. With a closer look, however, you'll see that this relationship couldn't be more positive. The constraint that setting imposes on story design doesn't inhibit creativity; it inspires it.

An archetypal story creates settings and characters so rare that our eyes feast on every detail, while its telling illuminates conflicts so true to humankind that it journeys from culture to culture.

When you think about it, going to the movies is bizarre. Hundreds of strangers sit in a blackened room, elbow to elbow, for two or more hours. They don't go to the toilet or get a smoke. Instead, they stare wide-eye at a screen, investing more uninterrupted concentration than they give to work, paying money to suffer emotions they'd do anything to avoid in life.

Quality storytelling inspires quality dialogue.

Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the opposite, posing questions and opening situations.

If the scene is about what the scene is about, you're in deep shit.

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