Richard Russo Quotes

The reason most novelists are not good screenwriters is that you don't have time for a lot of details. Novelists can really create a richer experience for the reader and have many subplots. You only have 90 pages because each page is a minute of screentime. You have to have certain things happen by certain pages, a certain story arc in the movie.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

I think when you're writing films that just come fresh out of your own imagination - I think probably anyone who's done that, there are certain themes or styles.

I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.

I've come to find more satisfaction and enjoyment in writing screenplays over the years because that's what I do primarily now.

People, certainly in the U.K., look down on screenwriting as an art form, but I love the discipline of it. Next to the bagginess of novel writing, it almost feels like a martial art.

How can you turn down Marks and Gran? Their scripts are so rich in texture.

The problem with the screenplay is that it's not literature, and it's not a film. It's a very weird, technical kind of blueprint that will be absolutely transformed into something else that is not that, you know? Honestly, a screenplay is no literature.

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.

I love writing for the screen.

Whenever you write script without a director, you put in things that point toward a style in which the story will be told, a subjective style.

I am a newspaper columnist and a professional screenwriter, but my real love is the novel for all the room it has for characters to come alive and breathe and face their challenges.

It is very tough to make a short film. It's like writing a short story, which is tougher than writing a novel. You can't afford to faff around; you can't indulge. You have to get to the point.

I try to write cinematically. Let me define what I mean by that. First of all, I try to write in a visual way so that the reader can watch a movie in their head. And it keeps moving. I try to structure the stories like a screenplay may be structured.

I'm kind of down for anything, as long as it's an amazing script that speaks to me, so I'm just constantly reading and constantly looking.

I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.

I definitely have the screenwriting itch.

The elegance of a really good screenplay, I admire it. I can't do it.

A good script makes our job a lot easier.

If I ever wrote a script myself, it would be strongly emotional material.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

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