Quotes About Imagination

My dad is a screenwriter, so he always used to watch movies for inspiration when I was a baby. I would watch movies with him, I guess, in the background.

Being a screenwriter for a comedy, you're writing for characters in them in their voice. I could write anyone.

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.'

When you read a script, you get a feeling from it.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

I always wanted to do a sci-fi movie, but most sci-fi scripts are either about saving the planet or fighting aliens.

In school, I used to write scripts and all that good stuff.

You start out with scripts pre-written, with no specific actor in mind, so you've got to build a character on top of that foundation. It's not just lifting words off the page, it's constructing a history around them as well.

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

I used to sculpt a bit as a kid.

I like to think of myself as kind of a sculptor, only I sculpt people.

Writing, film, sculpture, music: it's all make-believe, really.

I made all sorts of things: drawings, sculptures - I was doing origami before I even knew the word. I was constantly creating.

If I couldn't be an actor, I would only consider being an astronaut, a sea otter, or a gynecologist.

I grew up watching 'Magnum, P.I.' and shows like that, where you could develop a character over eight seasons, with stories along the way.

I had to work up the courage to even imagine myself running for Congress. But I eventually decided that our country had a moral problem in only letting white men - even the right-minded ones - have a seat at the table.

When I sit down to write, I know everything I need to know... I start writing, and within 30 seconds or 60 seconds, I'm watching a movie. I'm not making this stuff up; the characters are acting it out,and I'm just writing it down.

When I was a kid growing up, you maybe secretly wanted to be an actor, but you never said.

Secretly, I'm a 5-year-old.

When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'

There is no such thing as Christian art or secular art - writing, painting, drawing, whatever it is.

It would be too frightening for me to consider myself a role model. But I like the idea of not being afraid of letting your imagination rule you, to feel the freedom of expression, to let creativity be your overwhelming drive rather than other things.