Top 50 Screenwriter Quotes

I don’t think I’m the best screenwriter in the world. It’s just important to me to write my movies so I’m personally invested in them.

I like to write, and I would love to be a screenwriter one day and a director.

Very often, things that people may think come from the writer, very often don’t. There’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to making a movie. When you hear a line of dialogue that sounds kind of tinny, it’s pretty easy to cite the screenwriter. But there’s a lot of stuff that goes into making a movie.

There’s a place for art in the world, but it can’t be at the top of the list for a working screenwriter.

I have always aspired to be a writer, be it as an author or a screenwriter, whatever the medium.

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.

You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.

I’ve been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.

My first job was as a groundskeeper at the local ballpark in the town where I grew up. There was a lot of down time, and I got to drive tractor, so it was pretty good gig. I’ve also taught creative writing, dabbled in reviewing and journalism, and toiled as a screenwriter.

Developing films with directors, developing films with actors, is a poor percentage play for a screenwriter.

As a screenwriter, you always have frustrations. It’s just the nature of the job, and you have to live with it. Your vision is not going to be the same as the director’s vision. It doesn’t mean one is better or worse; it means they’re different.

Bill Condon, I must say, may have been one of the best professional experiences of my life, collaborating with him. He, himself, is an Academy Award winning screenwriter. He is a storyteller first and foremost, so we speak the same language. We approach things always from the story.

There is the cult of the actor and of the director, and there’s even been the cult of the celebrity chef and gardener, but there has never been a cult of the screenwriter. But I’m happy about that because what I crave – in a completely venal way – is creative opportunities, not recognition.

No one should feel sorry for a successful screenwriter.

Over the years, I’ve realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I’m in an odd world where I make things and share them with people.

If one real working screenwriter had visited us in college and just said, ‘This is what my day is like,’ it would have been really helpful.

To have someone like Clint Eastwood come along and shoot your first draft as written is just any screenwriter’s dream. And Clint is very straightforward. If it’s good enough to get his attention, it’s good enough to produce.

My mom’s a screenwriter, and before that, she was an actress, and my father was an actor; my stepfather was a director, so I was on sets a lot as a kid. I loved the magic of the set. You walk in, and it’s a living room, and you walk outside, and it’s just a piece of wood held up by another piece of wood.

When I was really young I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a screenwriter. I wrote stories.

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world. I always had a mind for characters and dialogue, and my head was filled with that stuff, so it seemed like a good place to start.

The dull externals of the screenwriter’s working life are well known: We are the people taking up too much table space at cafes.

Chekhov would have been an excellent screenwriter. He is singularly good at dipping in and out of a group of people’s lives, like Robert Altman did.

As a journalist, as a screenwriter and as a director, I’m trying to tell compelling and truthful stories.

I would say what you have to do as a screenwriter is strip the book back to find the skeleton. When you’ve found the skeleton – that’s what you trust – you reclothe.

I want a career writing these novels that I can be proud of. And then I want one as a screenwriter.

Being a screenwriter is not enough for a full creative life.

Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

Real pirates were better than in movies, more daring and terrifying and cunning than any screenwriter could imagine. They operated during the Golden Age of Piracy, from 1650 to 1720.

Vidal was a novelist, an essayist, a playwright, a screenwriter, and many other things. Buckley started a magazine, hosted a TV show, lead a political movement, and was a master debater. They were multihyphenates in a way that you rarely see anymore.

I learned that you have to say that you’re a filmmaker. You’re not a screenwriter; you’re not a director for hire. You’ve got to take charge. You’re a filmmaker, and you’re going to make a film.

My daughter has seen the transition from struggling screenwriter to successful picture book author, and she’s enjoyed it very much because she’s a wonderful little kid. And she’s always believed in her daddy.

A screenwriter heard me read from my novel ‘The Wishbones’ when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result.

You get to Hollywood and you are in the land of big money where they don’t like to see only one screenwriter’s name. It’s much better if you’ve got four or five.

I think the best black screenwriter is Quentin Tarantino.

When I write a screenplay – and I think it’s one of the reasons why it was frustrating for me just to be a screenwriter – I’m not thinking of it in terms of words on a page; I’m thinking in terms of visual images – basically, a comic book. I’m thinking of it in a series of shots.

But here’s the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

I guess you could say I’m a model slash hotelier slash actor slash screenwriter.

What you do is get the right director and the right screenwriter and the right cast. It’s a fantastic job.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., whose youthful dreams of being a successful Hollywood screenwriter never materialized, is proving to the world that he does indeed have a talent for concocting fictional stories.

Even though I am in this weird position of being a semi-recognizable screenwriter, which isn’t that common, at the same time, I’m not an actress. I’m pretty isolated.

You have to determine what you are and send the messages out to people, like, ‘Hey, I’m a screenwriter – look at this.’ You can’t sit around, wondering why people aren’t calling and asking about my writing.

When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.

When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.

As a screenwriter and a half-Jew, I tend to look at the glass half-empty.

What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It’s my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.

I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I’m having trouble. I’ve just sacked my second screenwriter.

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world.

I definitely had some heated but extremely productive chats with screenwriter Justin Monjo, but while it’s my story, it’s their movie, so I have to allow for compression and poetic license.

I feel that one of the fields that I need to learn a lot is screenwriting. I used to write my own screenplays, but it’s just that I remember that at that time, I was saying to myself, ‘I wish one day I will meet a screenwriter that will help me because I feel that I need to learn.’

You don’t get to be a good screenwriter unless you do 20, 30 drafts: fact.