Writing Dialogue Quotes

I think, in a weird way, the reason I was drawn to screenwriting and the reason I really love doing it is because I love writing dialogue. ~ David Benioff

For me, the dialogue is the easiest part of writing. It just always seems so obvious what a character will say. Maybe it's because I talk too much! ~ Julia Quinn

For all forms, writing dialogue is almost like writing music. I pay close attention to rhythms and tones. ~ Sefi Atta

Silence of the Lambs screenwriter Ted Tally put the art of writing dialogue succinctly: 'What's important is not the emotion they're playing but the emotion they're trying to conceal. ~ John Yorke

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft. ~ David Hare

I love film and have taken a stab at a screenplay. I love writing dialogue and found it highly enjoyable. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

I'm terrible at story and structure, but I'm not so bad at writing dialogue. ~ Steve Buscemi

Nothing teaches you as much about writing dialogue as listening to it. ~ Judy Blume

I grew up in the theatre. It's where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection. ~ Aaron Sorkin

I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic. ~ Jessica Hagedorn

All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

But, you say, there is very little conversation in this book. Why isn't there more dialoge? What we want in a book by this citizen is people talking; that is all he knows how to do and now he doesn't do it. The fellow is no philosopher, no savant, an incompetent zoologist, he drinks too much and cannot punctuate readily and now he has stopped writing dialogue. Some one ought to put a stop to him. He is bull crazy. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation. ~ Tom Stoppard

When writing dialogue, I hear it in both Russian and English, and try to find a language that combines the two. ~ David Bezmozgis

I was just this chubby little Indian kid who looked like a nerd. I didn't have a ton of academic skills. It wasn't until I was in high school that I was like, "I guess I like writing dialogue." So that's how I got into it. ~ Mindy Kaling

I thought you died, but writing this, I'm not sure you did. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

You can write a 1st paragraph that continues the same thought you expressed in your headline. If you stop a reader with a headline about house paint, you can be sure of at least one thing about that reader: He wants more info about house paint. You will not lose him as long as you continue to give him what he wants. ~ John Caples

The highest privilege of being a writer is being able to say, 'open your mind to me and I'll take you to another world. ~ Alexei Maxim Russell

What mattered was writing it: the act of words. ~ Rose Tremain

Interviews, research, more interviews, fact-checking, writing, rewriting - and then, in an instant, it is over, ~ Hanya Yanagihara

If it's bad, I'll hate it because I hate bad writing. If it's good, I'll be envious and hate it all the more. ~ Woody Allen

The spectacle of a judge pouring over the picture of some nude, trying to ascertain the extent to which she arouses prurient interests, and then attempting to write an opinion which explains the difference between that nude and some other nude has elements of low comedy. ~ Thurman Arnold

Writing a memoir isn't particularly interesting to me. I'm not like Ellen [DeGeneres], where I can write, 'Water bottles
they're crazy!' and it's funny. ~ Lauren Graham

My first writing job was with a company called TheatreworksUSA. ~ Robert Lopez

I provoke thought, because that is what needs provoking. Humanity seems to hate thinking more than any other activity, and yet that is the activity most needed. I do what I can to force thought along, and I am hated and worse - ignored - for it. That's ultimately acceptable to me, because the work needs to be performed; I can perform it; and I wish to perform it. Let others appreciate it or not as they may; it pleases me to do what I do, so I do it. ~ Robert Peate

Which is an interactive sport for our family, since Gil likes to groan over the writing and point out the plot twists ahead of time, and Jeremy tears his hair out over the historical inaccuracies, and Dad makes corny jokes, till Mom reminds us, loudly, that some people are trying to watch the movie. Then we'll all quiet down for about five minutes, until Olivia remarks that the costume designer should have dressed the star in kitten heels instead, because it's a lot harder to run in stilettos. ~ Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

Writing is like building a bridge while you're on it. If you step forward you fall off and there's nothing in front of you. ~ Jason Schwartzman

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry. ~ Julian Barnes

The one affectation I have forced on the publisher ... are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter. ~ Andy Rooney

My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I don't believe in writers' block. Do doctors have 'doctors block?' Do plumbers have 'plumbers' block?" No. We all have days when we don't feel like working, but why do writers turn that into something so damn special by giving it a faintly romantic name. ~ Larry Kahaner

They thought that writing had
something to do with
the politics of the
thing.
they were simply not
crazy enough
in the head
to sit down to a
typer
and let the words bang
out.
they didn't want to
write
they wanted to
succeed at
writing. ~ Charles Bukowski

The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time. I don't do too many notes. I keep it mostly in my head. I usually start writing a new book around January, and it's due October 1. ~ Harlan Coben

I learned at a very early age it's the reaction to the word, that gives it it's power.

The positive and negative affect on a single person is the driving force that created my love of writing. ~ Steven L. Hiller

I did a minor in creative writing in college, but I didn't start writing until I stayed at home with my own children. ~ Vanessa Diffenbaugh

There's no such thing as a 'writing talent.' Anyone can be taught to write a good sentence. What writers are born with is a 'third ear,' not for words but for human nature. And like people with an ear for music who can play the piano without lessons or notes, we can't explain how we know what we know - we just know. ~ Florence King

The Psalms are the steady, sustained subcurrent of healthy Christian living. They shaped the praying and vocation even of Jesus himself. They can and will do the same for us. The Psalms do this, to begin with, simply because they are poetry set to music: a classic double art form. To write or read a poem is already to enter into a different kind of thought world from our normal patterns. A poem is not merely ordinary thought with a few turns and twiddles added on to make it pretty or memorable. A poem (a good poem, at least) uses its poetic form to probe deeper into human experience than ordinary speech or writing is usually able to do, to pull back a veil and allow the hearer or reader to sense other dimensions. Sometimes ~ N. T. Wright

It must not be forgotten that reason too needs to be sustained in all its searching by trusting dialogue and sincere friendship. A climate of suspicion and distrust, which can beset speculative research, ignores the teaching of the ancient philosophers who proposed friendship as one of the most appropriate contexts for sound philosophical enquiry. ~ Pope John Paul II

Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, 'Look at my beautiful home! Isn't it fine?' And not, 'Look at the home so-and-so has built.' Thus we shouldn't cry, 'Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!' But rather, 'Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave? ~ Roman Payne

Anyone who's familiar with my writing schedule knows that there is always plenty of time between books for me! ~ Rebecca Stead

The easiest thing about writing a book is coming up with the idea. We all have tons of great ideas for books, right? The issues come AFTER we have the great idea. ~ Jean Nicole Rivers

As I read my poems aloud, I paid still more attention to sound in my writing. One morning as I revised, I set down a word that I knew was not right, and I heard myself think: But I can say it so that it's right. Immediately, I knew that I had understood one of the hazards of reading aloud. Performance can paper over bad writing, or substitute for the best language. Performance is a problem, and most performance poets or slammers are actors or standup comedians and not poets; we never hear a line break and seldom a new metaphor. There are other problems with the popularity of the poetry reading, but largely the reading has been good for poetry because poets watch their own poems come back to them on the faces of listeners. One addresses not only the Muse but actual people. ~ Donald Hall

The future is completely open and so is the past. And we are writing them right now. Making a different past or future is only up to us now. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Start by writing the truest sentence you know ~ Ernest Hemmingway

Because at this time, in this place, Chinese writing exhibits symptoms of a mental disorder. ~ Murong Xuecun

Writing books is fun because after I do a show for a couple hours, I'm in a bus for 22 hours. It's not hard for me to look out the window and tell a joke here and there. ~ Willie Nelson

I'm going to spend my life writing poems, turning them into music that will affect people and touch their hearts. I'm going to write the songs that people can't write for themselves. ~ Stevie Nicks

I still lack a political, religious, and philosophical world view. I change it every month, so I'll have to limit myself to the description of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak. ~ Anton Chekhov

Style is less the man than the way a man takes himself. ~ Robert Frost

The purpose of writing inspirational notes is simply to build others up because there are too many people in the demolition business. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people. ~ Katherine Mansfield

The challenge in writing the songs for The Aristocats truly fell on the animators & director of the film. Robert & I wrote the initial songs for the film, just prior to leaving full-time employment at the Walt Disney Studios. Therefore, some of the songs we wrote for The Aristocats were never used. I believe, therefore, the challenge fell upon the makers of the film to select what songs made the final cut. ~ Richard Sherman

Very well, I promise. So, what did you get for me?" Angeline paused for a beat. "Jeans." "What?" croaked Artemis. "And a T-shirt" ... Artemis took several breaths. "Does the T-shirt have any writing on it?" A rustling of paper crackled through the phone's speakers. "Yes, it's so cool. There's a picture of a boy who for some reason has no neck and only three fingers on each hand, and behind him in this sort of graffiti style is the words RANDOMOSIY. I don't know what that means but it sounds really current." Randomosity though Artemis, and he felt like weeping. ~ Eoin Colfer

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius. ~ Walter Bagehot

I wasn't always a novelist. I began my writing career as a journalist, working on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney, Australia, doing the crime beat and court reporting. Having grown up in a small country town, I felt as though I had nothing to write about. ~ Michael Robotham