Quotes About Screenwriting

I do a lot of screen re-writing.

I had a one-year-old son. How will my failure or success limit what he becomes? I was trying to write screenplays. It doesn't pay very well until you sell one. I was poor.

I'm the Emily Dickinson of screenplays.

I like to write, and I would love to be a screenwriter one day and a director.

There's a place for art in the world, but it can't be at the top of the list for a working screenwriter.

I think that screenwriting probably isn't seen as writing in the same way that novel-writing is seen as writing. But I certainly don't see it that way.

There's a satisfaction I get from writing fiction that I will never get from screenwriting.

I've made up little mantras for myself, catchphrases from a screenwriting book that doesn't exist. One is 'Write the movie you'd pay to go see.' Another is 'Never let a character tell me something that the camera can show me.'

As much as I really like the screenwriting thing, the novel is where the author has so much control.

It's very difficult to find good scripts in Hollywood any more.

I find that most of my scripts have a lot more scenes than most films, so the average movie might have 100 scenes, my average script has 300 scenes.

Ensure that your script is watertight. If it's not on the page, it will never magically appear on the screen.

I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.

I eventually want to do writing on all the films, but not necessarily to be the writer. Writing is a painful, painful thing; it really is.

Some of our best writers are self taught. Screenwriting is a combo of craft and art. The craft part can be taught, about how to be visual and economical with scenes. However, finally it's the individuality of the writer that will come into play.

In Hollywood, they create banks of scripts, whether they are used or not.

I think 'In The Heat Of The Night' was one of the most influential films on me. Looking back now, I can see how influential it was on my screenwriting because here you have what looks to be a crime procedural, and it's actually a study in race and loneliness, and a perception of an era.

When I started earning money from screen-writing, for a long time my only indulgences were books.

In the morning, Capra would arrive with twenty-or-so pages in which he'd written down all of his ideas. Most were terrible, then all of a sudden there would be one which was astounding.

I've read many great samples, both of existing shows I liked and original pilots, and definitely hired the writers - or, at least, tried to!

I've written pilots. I wrote a movie.

When I first began writing, it was not in screenwriting but in poetry. That form was so evocative, all about the image and the emotion captured in a Polaroid-like smattering of words.

Screenwriting is not an artform, it is a punishment from God.

My God, there are so many mediocre screenplays out there.