Xavier Dolan Quotes

I find that screenwriting is at best kind of a hackwork in some ways.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic.

I think, in a weird way, the reason I was drawn to screenwriting and the reason I really love doing it is because I love writing dialogue.

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.

By the time I wrote 'Any Given Sunday' or 'Bats,' I sort of knew what my job was in terms of what a writer of dialogue does.

I went to journalism school, so sometimes writing the script of 'Being Mary Jane' is me putting my journalism hat on.

First and foremost, it's got to be on the page. It starts with the writing.

Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

I was trained in storytelling by Jim Shooter, Stan Lee, and Larry Hama. Doesn't make me a genius, and there really isn't anything fancy about the stage direction in my scripts.

For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.

The intensity of the story breaking on 'Vampire' has never been easy. Every week, you're starting with a blank board and trying to make a new movie. There's no formula; there's no franchise to hang your hat on.

If you just want to be a writer, I don't care, for pitching, for writing dialogue, you should take an improvisation class. It's super important.

I'm a big believer that the script is your bible.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

At least for me, writing a book is continual exposure to blind spots. There were things I wanted to be true and wanted to believe, but it always got more complicated in the fiction.

For me, the dialogue is the easiest part of writing. It just always seems so obvious what a character will say. Maybe it's because I talk too much!

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.

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

At the end of the day, it's really, really difficult to make a brand-new show, to write a pilot where you have to introduce characters and everyone has to kind of be dynamic and have something different for themselves.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

Personally, I read a lot of scripts.