25 quotes found
“In comedy laughter settles all arguments.”
“Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.”
“All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.”
“Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.”
“Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.”
“If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.”
“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.”
“Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.”
“When talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talen...”
“Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, c...”
“No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.”
“The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.”
“No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.”
“Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.”
“A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”
“In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.”
“Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus e...”
“When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.”
“We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic....”
“Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, withou...”
“Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.”
