These script quotes will inspire you. To write the script for (a play, movie, television show, etc.) or handwriting as distinct from print; written characters.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging script quotes, script sayings, and script proverbs.
Best Script Quotes
- “The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.” ~ Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- “I like it when you read a script and there’s the part that you show to the other characters and then there’s the part that only the audience knows.” ~ Anjelica Huston
- “If the script’s good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly. I also don’t learn things for auditions, because I feel like it’s just a test of memorizing rather than being real. Maybe every other actor would think that was terrible, I don’t know. But it seems to have worked for me, so far.” ~ Olivia Colman
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“When I started out, nobody gave me scripts, so I had to write…” ~ Ang Lee
- “I wanted to put a reference to masturbation in one of the scripts for the Sandman. It was immediately cut by the editor [Karen Berger]. She told me, “There’s no masturbation in the DC Universe.” To which my reaction was, “Well, that explains a lot about the DC Universe.”” ~ Neil Gaiman
- “When I sent those scripts, that was the lowest point of my life. We’d just had our second son, and when I went to collect them from hospital, I went to the bank to try and get some money to buy some diapers, the screen showed I’ve got $26 left.” ~ Ang Lee
- “It’s hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.” ~ David Duchovny
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“Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.” ~ Ingmar Bergman
- “You define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
- “If God is the author of life, there must be a script.” ~ Ravi Zacharias
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“I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten.” ~ Francis Ford Coppola
- “There’s one great script that hit my desk that I didn’t change at all, and that was True Romance.” ~ Tony Scott
- “The most important thing is the story. Not the script, but the story.” ~ Richard D. Zanuck
- “The reason I turn down 99% of a hundred, I mean a thousand, scripts is because romantic comedies are often very romantic but seldom very funny.” ~ Hugh Grant
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“If you are making a script based on a book it can be frustrating going back to the source novel, because you’re turning the story into a totally different thing; the narrative of film is different from that of a book.” ~ Clive Owen
- “Here’s what I didn’t know when I was starting out that I now know…I thought when you were starting out it was really hard to write because you hadn’t broken in yet, you hadn’t really hit your stride yet. What I found out paradoxically is that the next script you write doesn’t get easier because you wrote one before…each one gets harder by a factor of 10.” ~ Shane Black
- “I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.” ~ Alexander Payne
- “Most aspiring screenwriters simply don’t spend enough time choosing their concept. It’s by far the most common mistake I see in spec scripts. The writer has lost the race right from the gate. Months – sometimes years – are lost trying to elevate a film idea that by its nature probably had no hope of ever becoming a movie.” ~ Terry Rossio
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“You read a script and its based on ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’, and it goes right in the bin.” ~ Tim Roth
- “I was a novelist first. But in the mid 80s, I did work in television for ten years. And yes, that was frequently the reaction to my scripts. People would say, you know, George, this is great. We love it, a terrific script, but it would cost five times our budget to shoot this.” ~ George R. R. Martin
- “The secret of making movies is having the strongest possible script.” ~ Harvey Weinstein
- “Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.” ~ Bette Davis
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“You can’t start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.” ~ Steven Spielberg
- “When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, ‘It’s in the script.’ If he says, ‘But what’s my motivation?, ‘ I say, ‘Your salary.'” ~ Alfred Hitchcock
- “I would always rather do a mediocre script with a great filmmaker than a great script with a mediocre filmmaker.” ~ Kirsten Dunst
- “The script is what you`ve dreamed up – this is what it should be. The film is what you end up with.” ~ George Lucas
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“A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.” ~ David Mamet
- “With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this.” ~ Akira Kurosawa
- “Movement should be a counter, whether in action scenes or dialogue or whatever. It counters where your eye is going. This style thing, for me it’s all fitted to the action, to the script, to the characters.” ~ Samuel Fuller
- “Turning one’s novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.” ~ Vladimir Nabokov
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“To make the script, you need ideas, and for me a lot of times, a final script is made up of many fragments of ideas that came at different times.” ~ David Lynch
- “What I look for in a script is something that challenges me, something that breaks new ground, something that allows me to flex my director muscle. You have got to think fast in this business, youve got to keep reinventing yourself to stay on top.” ~ Michael Bay
- “I only sound intelligent when there’s a good script writer around.” ~ Christian Bale
- “A movie goes from several stages, from idea to script. As you continue shooting, you will make some adjustments. You’re constantly adjusting. It’s like a piece of music. You’re constantly trying to make it better.” ~ Robert Rodriguez
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“To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.” ~ Quentin Tarantino
- “I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.” ~ Steve Martin , Script quotes writing
- “Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you’re seeing the movie, you know it’s something different.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Everything you do on set is directly related to your imagination when you read the script for the first time.” ~ Ewan McGregor
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“The only thing that gets me back to directing is good scripts.” ~ Steven Spielberg
- “I’m most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page sunrise over the desert and masses of a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.” ~ Anthony Hopkins
- “I don’t look at scripts. I just write them.” ~ James Cameron
- “When you have a good script you’re almost in more trouble than when you have a terrible script.” ~ Robert Downey, Jr. , Good script quotes
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“Success is not important to me, nor are power or money. If the script feels good, then I’m in. It’s that simple.” ~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt
- “When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with. My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something. It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.” ~ Akira Kurosawa
- “It all starts with the script: it’s not worth taking myself away from my family if I don’t have something I’m really passionate about.” ~ Steven Spielberg
- “Anyone can write. But comedy, you’ve got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.” ~ Michael Caine
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“I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started.” ~ Preston Sturges
- “My closet is full of sad little scripts that didn’t get made that have sad endings. It’s very hard to get a movie made that has a sad ending.” ~ Nora Ephron
- “To be honest I don’t watch the show, I don’t watch any TV, so I have no idea what the show is about. I go to Hawaii, shot my scenes and script and ‘Ciao.’ I’m not a ‘Lost’ fanatic and it’s a disappointment for thousands people and friends that are dying to know what will happen. They know more than me.” ~ Sonya Walger
- “To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up?” ~ Chinua Achebe
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“When I do a movie, I have the script. I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what my character does and where he’s going. If I have ideas I want to express or changes I want to make, there’s one guy: the director. It’s different in television.” ~ Holt McCallany
- “You can’t fix a bad script after you start shooting. The problems on the page only get bigger as they move to the big screen.” ~ Howard Hawks
- “Somebody comes to your house. You know they’re coming, so it’s not a surprise. And they give you an envelope that has your scenes in it. And they sit in the car outside for a half an hour while you read your scenes, then they ring your doorbell and you give your scenes back. Then you shoot the movie a few weeks later or something. The next time you see your scenes is the night before you start shooting. I never read the script [Blue Jasmine], so I didn’t really know what it was about.” ~ Alden Ehrenreich
- “I remember calling and asking, because I had a few lines that were like, “How could the character have done this?” and I hadn’t read the part of the script that said what she [ Cate Blanchett] did, so they put me on the phone with Woody… Allen. I don’t know if I could really say “Woody.”” ~ Alden Ehrenreich
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“I’m so respectful of good writing. It’s the blueprint for the movie. You have to have that script there because, if you don’t, you’re going to have problems. It’s very important. It’s also a gut instinct.” ~ Molly Shannon
- “You really get a feeling, when you’re reading scripts, pretty quickly. Within 20 or 25 pages, you can get a sense of the part. I always think about whether I’m right for it and whether I can do it. If I don’t think I’m right for it, it should go to somebody else.” ~ Molly Shannon
- “Harry [ Hannigan] and Chris [Ellis] are sitting there while we’re doing [ Fresh Hell], and Chris is directing, obviously, but if we start fooling around a little bit, Harry comes in, and he’s got some addition that makes it even funnier. But we start with a complete script.” ~ Brent Spiner
- “Gian Luigi Polidoro and his girlfriend had written this script, it was an American comedy, and they decided I was the guy to play the part. I was young, they offered me the lead in the film, and I said, “Sure, I’ll do it.” And I’m telling you, there is a movie waiting to be made about the making of a movie like that, particularly at that time in New York. I mean, we shot all over the streets of New York without permits. We would literally grab a shot and run. But Rent Control… I think the total cost was $100,000, and to this director’s credit, I think it looks like $200,000.” ~ Brent Spiner
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“Because the filming process was so organic and there was no script, the film [Dream of Life] was literally telling us what it wanted to be in the editing room.” ~ Steven Sebring
- “The woman who wrote the movie [Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains], her name is Nancy Dowd. She’s a wonderful writer. She wrote Coming Home. And when I read the script, at that time, I thought, “This movie is going to do for girls what Breaking Away did for boys.” I thought it was going to be huge. It was a great script.” ~ Brent Spiner
- “I got to play a funny part [in the The Master Of Disguise]. There was one thing my character did that involved flatulence and laughing at the same time – that was in the script – and that was basically what sold me on it. I really thought, “This can’t help but be funny.” And when I saw the film, I was proud that I’d had those moments.” ~ Brent Spiner
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“The character of Brent Spiner. We certainly collaborate on the concept of that, but he basically writes the script, then it’s sort of a combination of his voice and my voice.” ~ Brent Spiner
- “It wasn’t exactly a cattle call. I had an agent, and they were seeing people for the parts, so my agent said, “Here’s the script, see if there’s anything that speaks to you.” And I did, and I called my agent and said, “I think this character Data is kind of interesting,” and she said, “Well, okay, I’ll get you the appointment with Junie Lowry.” I had to read with the casting agent first, ’cause nobody really knew me then. Then after that, I had, I think, six different auditions for the role. And finally it was me [on Star Trek].” ~ Brent Spiner
- “I think everyone agrees First Contact was our best film, and even at that, they’re kind of… I don’t know, they’re sort of movies. But they’re kind of really Star Trek movies, if you take my meaning. It’s hard for me to say. I was glad to be doing them. Whether they were good isn’t really up to me to determine, and it doesn’t matter what I think. I thought we had a really nice script on Nemesis, and the audience didn’t seem to care for it, so what can you do?” ~ Brent Spiner
