Richard E. Grant Quotes

Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story.

If you have a great script and great dialogue, you don't need to improvise.

Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

I want to write a film. I need to think of the right idea and focus on that; I love writing.

It always comes down to script and characters.

Writing a script consumes so much of time.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

You can't improv off of bad writing. Then you have to actually create your objective, which is really hard to do in an element without the skeleton to go off of.

Anybody can write a film script 'cuz it has been reduced to a formula.

Somebody wrote a script around us, but Dustin Abraham came with the best one.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

I don't do issue writing. I do character writing.

Lots of times when I'm offered things, I can't see how a story gets filmed. Either it's too internal or it doesn't have a strong spine.

Films are a long process and the script is the first part.

When you're writing for a show, you're writing part of the script. You have to tell the story.

Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

Writing a great script - not just a good one, but a great one - is almost an impossible task.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.

I never have particular actors planned when I'm in the process of writing.

Settings are obviously important - and as a writer, you have to respect what was real at the time of the story you're writing. But the real key to success lies in finding the right characters to carry that story.

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.