Screenplay Writing Quotes

Sometimes you get involved in a film because you just love making movies and you want to keep working. Sometimes you're lucky enough to find something that you really care about. Therefore, now I'm emphasizing developing my own projects and writing my own screenplays, so that I can do exactly what I like to do.

Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.

I wrote a screenplay for a 'Sweet Valley High' adaptation, and it's really amazing to me how many women who are my age have responded to the idea and are excited about the movie.

Most of screenplay writing is deciding which voices you want to listen to and take on board.

I kept starting 'Anansi Boys' as a movie and stopping, and eventually wrote the novel and was happy.

Typically, when you sell your story rights to a movie production company, they can do whatever they want with it. The writer is typically not involved anymore.

Doing TV shows helps me a lot in my screenplay writing and filmmaking, especially since my TV shows are in different formats: comedy sketches, talk shows, debate programs, art variety shows, quiz shows. These enable me to meet interesting people with interesting stories and to learn about interesting subjects, all of which I can reflect into film.

Those writers that have zero say in their movie adaptations have zero say because they sell it. If you don't sell it, and you do it yourself, and you wait until the screenplay is ready, you don't have to worry about that.

The number one metaphor I have in my mind for writing a screenplay is that...you're trying to climb a mountain blindfolded. And the funny thing about that is, you think, 'Okay, that's hard because you're climbing up a rock face, and you don't know where you're going, and you don't know where the top is, you can't see what's below you...' But actually the hardest part about climbing a mountain blindfolded is just finding the mountain.

I want to get married before I'm 30. And I'd like to win an Oscar before then.

I'm addicted to directing!

Spike optioned my first book, 'Now the Hell Will Start,' and he trusted me to write the screenplay, too. That was an awesome learning experience - I grew up watching Spike's movies, and here he was giving me handwritten notes about structure and dialogue. His feedback taught me so much about how to craft a cinematic narrative.

Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer. I'm very interested in studying cultures and social issues, but as an academic I don't think I would have been too successful.

You spend a lot of time studying, and you want to do something with that. Something that's tangible, like creating a show, writing a screenplay, making a difference.

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

I can't imagine writing a screenplay where I didn't feel deeply connected at some kind of visceral level to the material.

Writing screenplays is incredibly hard. I can't call it joy. Writing Novels? Joy. Directing? Joy. Writing Screenplays? That's where you pay all your dues.

When I started writing the screenplay for 'The Queen,' about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.

I'm very keen. Adaptations of other people's work, too. I got fascinated by the adaptation process, so I think that'd be a really interesting task. I would happily write original screenplays as well. I think it's become one of my favorite genres.

[Macon Blair] wrote a beautiful - once it was kicking off and we were gonna make the movie - he sent me this really beautiful document on Tony [from "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore" ]. It was like ruminations. "Maybe this ... I don't know ..." And I loved it.

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

There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.

I would love to option 'Crying of Lot 49' and turn it into a movie.

The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House.

I was a screenwriting major at Georgetown, and I was in class with some really strong writers like Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote 'The Dark Knight' with Chris, his brother. He wrote 'The Prestige,' the story for 'Memento.'