Paul Rust Quotes

I have tons of stuff that, you know, seems like it's a well-constructed sentence but it is not how people talk, it's how people write. So that's why I think it's sometimes easier for me to write for actors 'cause I know what's frustrating about, you know, sentences that come out just perfect. Well, who talks like that? And who of us don't overlap each other? Except on the radio, hopefully.

There aren't any real dumb people in my voices. It's always irritated me about Hollywood dialogue - there's so much dialogue that would just bore a Ford mechanic. This is not how people talk.

In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page.

With some writers, the script looks beautiful on the page, but nobody actually speaks like that.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

Write the way you talk. Naturally.

Speak your dialogue out loud. If it sounds like the way people talk, then write it down.

I've always had a problem with conventional punctuation of dialogue because it does seem to me to set it off too much from the narrative. I mean, in life, things don't stop while somebody says something, and then stuff starts up again; it's all happening at once.

The first time I ever heard professional actors delivering lines that I wrote was completely surreal and was just a gigantic moment in my life. It was just a little bit mind-blowing and completely strange to have something that had been on my computer being said out loud.

On 'Southland,' when a helicopter joins our scene, we don't skip a beat. The actors talk louder because that's what cops do in real life.

I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.

There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.

A script is a unique literary form, because it's not the end product; it's a blueprint. If you're not thinking of that end product, there's going to be a disconnect.

Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood.

Often you find the character through the things they say. How they talk about other people, how they describe themselves - which is very rare.

On 'Prison Break,' I tended to talk a lot! They gave me a lot of fun words to say. There were always these great mouthfuls of words that would fall out!

A script is so word-heavy, after trying to communicate so much verbally, I think you need a different outlet to give the verbal centre of your brain a chance to cool off.

In all of my career, the style is still the same, and that is of a friend, just sitting and talking.

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

I kind of connected the dots, like, 'Oh, we're just saying stuff. We're just saying things that make sense, so let's just say them like you say them in real life.' It was my first and one of my only acting lessons 'cause I never really studied acting.

When the script is finished, and you're sitting around at a table read, and all the actors are reading the words that you've written, and you're hearing it out loud for the first time, that is always, every single time, no matter what, a magical process.

On 'Silver Linings Playbook,' David O. Russell is the master at getting his actors to give him something that he doesn't expect. He loves to keep things spontaneous. He talks to the actors throughout a take because, in real life, you don't know what the next person is going to say; you don't know when you're going to get interrupted.

People talk in ungrammatical, unwriterly ways.

I wrote for 'The Sopranos' and worked on big, blustery characters for quite a while.

That's kind of my job in the writer's room. I'm always the guy going, like, 'People wouldn't say that there. They wouldn't say that.' Like, I hate when I watch sitcoms and something crazy happens, and people just kind of go, 'Huh?' and then they just go on.