Film Writing Quotes

It certainly made a film writing career for me. ~ Buck Henry

I look at careers like Ben Stiller and think that's a great career to have where you're doing movies that you write and direct, and also act in films, although he's primarily an actor. ~ Eli Roth

When I write a film, there's a particular thing I am wrestling with and the question or concern I'm dealing with has to be big enough for me to dedicate a year or two of my life. If the question isn't big enough, or rich enough, I'll lose interest. ~ Josh Radnor

I did the drawing and writing - for five years. I made a lot of short films the whole while and I made a promise to myself in front of the mirror that I would stop drawing when I signed my first contract for a feature film. ~ Patrice Leconte

I think writing a book with film in mind is a way to write a really bad books. You can usually tell those books that are packaged to become films. ~ Charlize Theron

I want to write a score for a film. It can be a proper film, maybe for a film kind of like ... I saw that movie 'Drive', or a bit of a 'Blade Runner' vibe. A little bit sci-fi, but I don't know. I've just always wanted to write a score for a film. ~ Flume

Every scene should be able to answer three questions: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now? ~ David Mamet

I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that. ~ Samantha Morton

I know that if a film is ready to emerge out of what I write, I'll be able to go off and make it without asking anyone's permission. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

As far as writing, I like watching bad movies. Nothing stops me in my tracks more than watching a great film like 'The Godfather' or 'Dog Day Afternoon' or 'The Graduate.' You watch one of those, and you never want to write again. Whereas with bad movies, it makes you think, If that counts, I certainly could write. ~ Jason Reitman

Both sex and death are eternal themes. You could make thousands of movies on this theme, and whether you have a human being who is painting, singing, making a film, writing, these are the themes that you will come back to and return to. If you don't have any of these artistic expressions, sex is one of the only gifts that nature gave you for free, so it is very important to celebrate it. And then, with death, we are condemned to that. This is absolutely present in our lives. ~ Pedro Almodovar

What i'm saying is, my friends, one ought to be able to let go. If a path does not please us, instead of insisting on going that specific way, of making our selfishness the guide, we ought to forsake. The books we cannot write, the films we cannot shoot, the projects we cannot develop, the jobs we cannot pursue and the people who no longer love us. Being able to let go, at times, is the most beautiful of all! ~ Elif Shafak

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it. ~ Alice Englert

Essentially, the scripts are not that different. Let's say, in literary terms, it's the difference between writing horizontally and writing vertically. In live television, you wrote much more vertically. You had to probe people because you didn't have money or sets or any of the physical dimensions that film will allow you. So you generally probed people a little bit more. Film writing is much more horizontal. You can insert anything you want: meadows, battlefields, the Taj Mahal, a cast of thousands. But essentially, writing a story is writing a story. ~ Rod Serling

As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book. ~ Iain Banks

The importance is getting to something truthful and in that moment can only be in that moment. I don't like to use the word "improvise," but it's a continual writing of the film. ~ Abdellatif Kechiche

Well, Toronto, I consider to be the birthplace of my films. I've made three films and this is the third one to premiere here in the same theater on the same day at the same time - they are my audience. They're the people that I think about while I'm writing, directing, and editing. I specifically make movies for them. ~ Jason Reitman

We don't work in the traditional TV format where we're like writing concurrently to shooting. Like, we really view it as a large feature film. ~ Jay Duplass

One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film. ~ Stanley Kubrick

I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it. ~ Stephen Sondheim

An evangelist is like a newscaster on television or a journalist writing for a newspaper ... except that the evangelist's mission is to tell the Good News that never changes. ~ Billy Graham

...it's merely writing, but you have to adjust your ear – I speak quietly – I sob – I whisper
... ~ John Geddes

We exponents of horror do much better than those Method actors. We make the unbelievable believable. More often than not, they make the believable unbelievable. ~ Vincent Price

As soon as I went to painting school in New York, I took an experimental film course, and everything clicked and came together. I realized my love of music and drama and the visual arts all came together. This happened in 1989. Since then, it's been a long road of educating myself in every possible way. ~ Patty Jenkins

It's so great in Hollywood now. You have people past 40 sitting and talking about serious stuff, writing and making movies and TV, but there's laser pistols and superheroes and alien monsters involved. It's viable and mainstream. ~ Nathan Fillion

It's a risk, but I'm sort of ready to let go of thinking of movies as books that you can watch. The notion of, 'If I put the narrative blocks in the right order, this will solve all of my storytelling problems.' No, it won't, and you end up with little more than books on film. ~ Shane Carruth

People say you can't teach writing, but I think that's nonsense. ~ Tracy Kidder

I've done really well so far in my career by trusting the audience to be as dissatisfied with convention as I am, as a film-goer. You want to go see a film that surprises you in some way. ~ Christopher Nolan

Inevitably I draw on my own relationships when I write, so if I'm writing about a fight between a husband and his wife, of course I'm going to think about a recent fight with my husband. Or if I'm writing about sisters, of course I'm going to think about my sister. ~ Emily Giffin

The kid's emotional growth won't suffer if they don't have the most frightening zombie costume in their class? No? Really?
Can I get that in writing? ~ Taya Kyle

Writing is like daydreaming through your fingers. ~ Jenna Alatari

I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun. ~ Walter Mosley

The secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it. ~ James Russell Lowell

I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs. ~ Jess Row

Making playlists can kill a whole afternoon for me. I like building very specific playlists for new writing projects. In a strange way, choosing certain songs is part of the process of plotting the book out. I pick songs that I think with resonate with characters, their personality quirks, relationship dynamics, action scenes, and so on. ~ Jonathan Maberry

I'm not much of a correspondent. My letters are not only uninteresting but sparse. I'm glad I don?t have to write for a living. It?s arduous work and the money is very uncertain. On those rare occasions when I wander into a bookstore it amazes me to see the avalanche of literature and semi-literature that is turned out weekly in this country. The people who write these things are either desperate for money or love starved. Why should anyone on a nice balmy day lock oneself in an office and hit a typewriter for hours on end. I think one of the greatest pleasures in the world is not writing ... ~ Groucho Marx

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way. ~ Ray Bradbury

In writing non-fiction about people who are living, you are always walking a fine line, carrying a burden to be fair that, in my opinion, should always be there. ~ Jonathan Coleman

That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.
At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar."
"Titanic City" was born.

It's the song, they said.
No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.
It's the sex, they whispered.
Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo.
"Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead. ~ Khaled Hosseini

The worst advice a young writer can get is "Write what you know." Imagination is more important than experience. ~ Joe Haldeman

It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Every stage of life is a chapter of a book. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

If you can't learn about reading and writing from Kurt, maybe you should be doing something else. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I don't like the strictly objective viewpoint [in which all of the characters' actions are described in the third person, but we never hear what any of them are thinking.] Which is much more of a cinematic technique. Something written in third person objective is what the camera sees. Because unless you're doing a voiceover, which is tremendously clumsy, you can't hear the ideas of characters. For that, we depend on subtle clues that the directors put in and that the actors supply. I can actually write, "'Yes you can trust me,' he lied." [But it's better to get inside the characters' heads.] ~ George R R Martin

There have been innumerable films about film-making, but Otto e Mezzo was a film about the processes of thinking about making a film
certainly the most enjoyable part of any cinema creation. ~ Peter Greenaway

Good writing is good writing no matter what genre you're writing in, and I believe that there are only a handful of fundamental craft tools that are essential for any genre-including nonfiction. ~ Georgia Heard

I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith. ~ Lancelot Andrewes

But the commission is now. The time to speak is when the Spirit of God boils the message so hot within you that it must come out. The time to write is when God Almighty presses his thumb against your heart and forces the words out like a steaming geyser. ~ Eric Ludy

For me, writing is just as much a choice as breathing. I can quit anytime I want, but not starting again would prove fatal. ~ Pamela Morris

I wrote about the night bird cries, the sea sounds and the lonely barking, and I liked what I wrote in flashes; but something was wrong with it. There is always something wrong with writing. So I tore the paper up at last, liking the untouched memory so much better, not wanting it forced into the insincerity of words. ~ Denton Welch

You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it! ~ Steven Spielberg

Writing of a chance early meeting with Dylan Thomas in a London bar, Kay Boyle writes (1955, in the era of McCarthyism, 1947-1956):

Perhaps because he [Dylan Thomas was so often out of place among men, we take him now as symbol. Perhaps because we who write in America are in great difficulties now, we cherish Dylan Thomas as if he were our own ego, our own wild soul freed of the flesh. An American critic, writing of the American literary scene, points out that thinking Americans, in this period of our nation's development, are deeply troubled because "the demands for national security and for individual freedom" are in conflict. ~ Kay Boyle

That's enough. You can stop now: the phrase Sedgwick said she longed to hear whenever she was suffering. (Enough hurting, enough showing off, enough achieving, enough talking, enough trying, enough writing, enough living.) ~ Maggie Nelson

They fuck you up, your mum and dad', and if you're planning on writing that's probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they've fucked you up good and proper. ~ Alan Bennett

In my early writing, all of my characters were exactly the same person. They all spoke the same, made the same types of jokes, reacted the same, etc. I think they were all just me in disguise. ~ James Dashner

There's nothing wrong with the screaming style of singing, and I'll be the first to admit that it conveys an emotion. But I'm getting older, and I can't scream and shout about the same things anymore. The songs I'm writing with Stone Sour call for a lighter, different approach. ~ Corey Taylor

Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument. ~ J.B. Priestley

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination. ~ Rosemary Mahoney

It's hard being a Broadway actor going into film where you have to tone everything down. In theater, everything you're taught is to be big and broad and make everyone feel like they are right next to you, even in the last row of seats. ~ Keke Palmer

I got to act with my childhood film idol, Robert Redford, and that's a gift in itself. ~ Chin Han

With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind and heart of the composer. ~ Henry Mancini

The difference between wanting to write and having written is one year of hard, relentless labour. It's a bridge you have to build all by yourself, all alone, all through the night, while the world goes about its business without giving a damn. The only way of making this perilous passage is by looking at it as a pilgrimage. ~ Shatrujeet Nath

A serious life, by definition, is a life one reflects on, a life one tries to make sense of and bear witness to. Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened. ~ Vivian Gornick

I associated excellence in writing with New York City. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

I don't want to write any more for the old Man-power instruments and am handicapped by the lack of adequate electrical instruments for which I now conceive my music. ~ Edgard Varese

Bringing a novel to light - revealing the form and cadence, shadows and demeanor of a protagonist constructed from thin air - linking scenes and synchronicity across translucent time - holding up a glass brimming with chilled, never-tasted liquid, then sipping from it with intoxicated focus - allowing lovers to make a perilous mess of things, fall apart and nakedly come back together again - looking through conjured windows deep into someone else's snow-bound solitude, feeling utterly alone yet being all-connected: this is not writing. It's world-creating.

It's raw, exposed dreaming. It's humbling. At first too personal and intimate to share, it evolves like a child into a life of its own until I have no say in what comes next.

It's what I wake at 4am to say Yes to, the spinning possibility of a new story relentlessly commanding me to write it down so it can whirl in your experience. ~ Laurie Perez

In theater, there's a lot of discipline involved in doing eight shows a week for a year and a half. It's nice to be able to bring some of that bag of tools with you over to the film world, where you don't have the rehearsal, you don't have an audience. You don't have a month of rehearsal to examine these words, and you meet the guy who's going to play your brother the morning that you shoot the scene. So you need a bag of tools. ~ William Sadler