These screenwriter quotes will inspire you. A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter for short), scriptwriter, or scenarist, is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs, and video games, are based.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging screenwriter quotes, screenwriter sayings, and screenwriter proverbs.
Best Screenwriter Quotes
- “You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff, that’s it.” ~ Rita Mae Brown
- “If you’re just creative, you’ll always have to rely on technical people. If you’re creative and technical, you’re unstoppable.” ~ Robert Rodriguez
- “Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” ~ Buster Keaton
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“Tagore once said – art has to be beautiful, but, before that, it has to be truthful.” ~ Ritwik Ghatak
- “When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.” ~ Sergio Leone
- “Here’s my unsolicited advice to any aspiring screenwriters who might be reading this: Don’t ever agonize about the hordes of other writers who are ostensibly your competition. No one else is capable of doing what you do.” ~ Diablo Cody
- “A lot of college graduates approach me about becoming screenwriters. I tell them, ‘Do not become a screenwriter, become a journalist,’ because journalists go into worlds that are not their own. Kids who go to Hollywood write coming-of-age stories for their first scripts, about what happened to them when they were sixteen. Then they write the summer camp script. At the age of twenty-three they haven’t produced anything, and that’s the end of the career.” ~ Nora Ephron
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“When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.” ~ Sam Shepard
- “I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn’t know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don’t have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.” ~ Julia Cameron , Screenwriter quotes writing
- “I counted it up once. I think I have written 45 full screenplays. Of those, maybe 15 have been shot, in some form. That’s a pretty good track record, but it’s not 100%. It is frustrating that, as a screenwriter, I’ve seen all those movies and they don’t exist in the real world. They’re juts inside my head and on those pages.” ~ John August
- “One of the things when you write, well the way I write, is that you are writing your scenario and there are different roads that become available that the characters could go down. Screenwriters will have a habit of putting road blocks up against some of those roads because basically they can’t afford to have their characters go down there because they think they are writing a movie or trying to sell a script or something like that. I have never put that kind of imposition on my characters. Wherever they go I follow.” ~ Quentin Tarantino
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“Stories are a different kind of true.” ~ Emma Donoghue
- “When you know my love, my love will warm you.” ~ Ruby Dee
- “A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.” ~ Ian Mcewan
- “Don’t keep a man guessing too long – he’s sure to find the answer somewhere else.” ~ Mae West
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“Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” ~ Peter Ustinov
- “Texas women have an amazing sense of purpose when they lose it. They’re the best girls in the world – they’re loyal and fun, but when they get mad, they’ll try to kill you.” ~ John Cusack
- “Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.” ~ Chuck Norris
- “It’s a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.” ~ Roberto Benigni
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“Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.” ~ Kevin Spacey
- “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” ~ Jim Carrey
- “I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population and gave birth to the whole world. Without them the rest [of the world] are not getting to know the whole story.” ~ Jane Campion
- “Read. Read. Read. Just don’t read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles.” ~ R. L. Stine
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“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they’re used.” ~ Max Brooks
- “A Message to Children Who Have Read This Book – When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.” ~ Roald Dahl
- “It’s very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children’s books to journalism – any kind of writing – and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I’d written.” ~ Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal
- “That’s the funny thing about life. We’re rarely aware of the bullets we dodge. The just-misses. The almost-never-happeneds. We spend so much time worrying about how the future is going to play out and not nearly enough time admiring the precious perfection of the present.” ~ Lauren Miller
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“If you put your foot in it, be sure it’s your best foot.” ~ Mae West
- “All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.” ~ Ayn Rand
- “It’s about misunderstandings between people and places, being disconnected and looking for moments of connection. There are so many moments in life when people don’t say what they mean, when they are just missing each other, waiting to run into each other in a hallway.” ~ Sofia Coppola
- “Time is a precious thing. Never waste it.” ~ Gene Wilder
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“Certain experiences you can’t survive, and afterward you don’t fully exist, even if you failed to die.” ~ Nic Pizzolatto
- “God gave me a great body and it’s my duty to take care of my physical temple.” ~ Jean-Claude Van Damme
- “You’re nothing short of my everything.” ~ Ralph Block
- “Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity.” Also: “Intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world.” ~ Robert Alan Aurthur
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“When in doubt, blow something up.” ~ J. Michael Straczynski
- “Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.” ~ Jim Jarmusch
- “You have to love what you do, and you have to need it like you need air. And there’s nothing else that would give me the same degree of satisfaction as acting, which is why I can’t walk away from it.” ~ Wentworth Miller
- “All drama is conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character. Without character, there is no story. And without story, there is no screenplay.” ~ Syd Field
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“America’s founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more – and nothing less.” ~ Ayn Rand
- “When men abandon reason, physical force becomes their only means of dealing with one another and of settling disagreements.” ~ Ayn Rand
- “The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them.” ~ Gene Roddenberry
- “Choose Life over the other stuff. Get out of your head. Live. Dress up. Eat. Touch people. Help out. Give up. Love people. Give your best away. There’s more. What’s the problem? Relax. You’re going to die. Throw a party. Eat off my plate. Sing to me. Meet me in the bedroom. Get a massage. Give one. Let your amazement out into the room. Pry open the box you hide your joy in. Be a poem.” ~ John Patrick Shanley
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“We weep for a bird’s cry, but not for a fish’s blood. Blessed are those with a voice.” ~ Mamoru Oshii
- “The world needs you. It doesn’t need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties – these books exist, and they’re tempting – but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and being kind.” ~ Charlie Kaufman
- “My teacher once told me – ”No one is perfect……..that is why pencils have erasers.”” ~ Mahesh Bhatt
- “You need contrast and conflict in order to tell a story. Stories need to have dark and light, turmoil, all those things. But that does not mean the filmmaker has to suffer in order to show the suffering. Stories should have the suffering, not the people.” ~ David Lynch
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“Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don’t risk failure, you’re never going to do anything that’s different from what you’ve already done or what somebody else has done.” ~ Charlie Kaufman
- “If a story doesn’t give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage.” ~ Samuel Fuller
- “The Alexander Technique works… I recommend it enthusiastically to anyone who has neck pains or back pain.” ~ Roald Dahl
- “Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness- happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you’re lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.” ~ Adela Rogers St. Johns
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“Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.” ~ Ruth Gordon
- “The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.” ~ Stephen Kendrick
- “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
- “If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” ~ Roald Dahl
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“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that’s what you’ve given me. That’s what I’d hoped to give you forever” ~ Nicholas Sparks
- “The Voice There is a voice inside of you That whispers all day long, “I feel this is right for me, I know that this is wrong.” No teacher, preacher, parent, friend Or wise man can decide What’s right for you–just listen to The voice that speaks inside.” ~ Shel Silverstein
- “As they say in Corsica… Goodbye!” ~ Gene Wilder
- “Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.” ~ Ray Bradbury
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“It wasn’t until I started reading and found books they wouldn’t let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.” ~ John Waters
- “Keep passing the open windows.” ~ John Irving
- “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours” ~ Alan Bennett
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“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” ~ Alan Alda
- “The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.” ~ Roald Dahl
- “We’re living in an acquisitive capitalist society that is fundamentally anti-family and fundamentally uncomfortable with just enjoying being human. We’d rather shop than live, acquire than love and stare into a screen than hold each other.” ~ Frank Schaeffer
