Aaron Sorkin Quotes

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

I've often said, not totally jokingly, that screenwriting doesn't really qualify as real writing at all. You don't string sentences into paragraphs. You don't maintain a constant breath, or create internal rhythms, or even develop a fully-formed thought. The camera does all that work for you!

I have stories that I'd like to maybe one day consider directing, but you need a lot of time to write and put it together.

I got a job as an assistant film editor, which lasted for a few years, but I found writing incredibly difficult, and I thought, 'How am I going to make a film if I can't write?' I didn't really comprehend that someone else would do that bit.

I had written for the theater and didn't know that I knew how to write for film. Ultimately, I think it's just trusting your voice, trusting your characters, and then telling them in a different medium.

I learned a lot about filmmaking from my dad. Starting when I was a child, I would listen to my dad as an actor, writer, director and producer talking about films - you know what the treatment would be in the opening, in the middle, and in the ending.

I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.

I am not interested in doing a film on the basis of a good story. I want a proper screenplay.

I started writing screenplays myself and eventually directing.

It's funny how that comes up, because sometimes I'll write something and I'll think, I don't know if that's a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays - they feel very theatrical to me.

Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read...if you don't read, you will never be a filmmaker.

I love working with actors. I love visual things. I always intended to be a writer who directs and a director who writes.

I never think of myself as a celebrity - or even an actor, actually. I think of myself as a writer-director.

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences - is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.

What I found interesting writing a screenplay as opposed to writing a novel is not the obvious thing, which is having to pare everything down and find the kind of essence, the skeleton if you like, which can then be fleshed out by performance and cinematography.

I think I came to film-making through writing. I started to write, and people, teachers, responded to my writing.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.

I love directing. I love creating things that I don't necessarily even have to be in. I like creating worlds. So I'm getting into writing movies and selling movies and television shows and creating worlds that then get to live beyond me.

I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book.

The only way you can learn about making films is by making them, by putting your stamp on the thing.

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

I think film writing, you're thinking in pictures, and stage writing, you're thinking in dialogue. In film writing, it's also, you only get so many words, so everything has to earn its place in a really economical way. I think for stage writing, you have more leeway.

I've been writing plays since the seventies and only came to moviemaking when I basically realized that I needed some money to pay the rent. I started to watch films with an eye to figuring out how to write them.