Robert McKee Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

  Robert McKee

  Writing, Discipline, Drill Sergeant

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• What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.

  Robert McKee

  Inspirational, Thinking, Stories

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.25, Harper Collins

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• 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.

  Robert McKee

  Cousin, Fear, War

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• Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

  Robert McKee

  Profound, Choices, Given

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.28, Harper Collins

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• In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

  Robert McKee

  Art, Liars, Lying

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• Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.

  Robert McKee

  Integrity, Unfinished Work, Theatre

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.

  Robert McKee

  Meaningful, Emotional, Museums

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• Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75 percent or more of a writer's labor goes into designing the story designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought.

  Robert McKee

  Powerful, Heart, Maturity

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• The principle of Creative Limitations calls for freedom within a circle of obstacles and restricted boundaries. Talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies. So we deliberately put obstacles in our path - barriers that will inspire us. We disciple ourselves as to what to do, while we're boundless as to how to do it.

  Robert McKee

  Inspiration, Creativity, Circles

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• The Business story is designed to trigger the listener to take an effective action. If it doesn't, the story fails.

  Robert McKee

  Stories, Action, Failing

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• Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

  Robert McKee

  Writing, Marathon, Sprint

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• Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.

  Robert McKee

  Slow Motion, Influence, Persuasion

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• Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I've stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate--the ritual often exhausts them.

  Robert McKee

  Laughter, Hate, Fall

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• Of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.

  Robert McKee

  Writing, Rough Times, Reason

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• Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.

  Robert McKee

  Stories, Life Is, Metaphor

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

  Robert McKee

  Writing, Cake, Guarantees

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• When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.

  Robert McKee

  Spring, Writing, Choices

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• The universal erosion of values has lead to the universal erosion of story.

  Robert McKee

  Erosion, Stories, Universal

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• Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.

  Robert McKee

  Boredom, Suffering, Desire

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• When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit!

  Robert McKee

  Smart, Book, People

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• The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.

  Robert McKee

  Sex, Law, Return

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• 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. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.

  Robert McKee

  Communication, Thinking, Talking

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• Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.

  Robert McKee

  Decision, Action, Willpower

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• Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.

  Robert McKee

  Creativity, Differences, Achievement

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• Classical design is a mirror of the human mind. It's how we see the world.

  Robert McKee

  Mirrors, Design, Mind

  "The Real McKee: Lessons of a screenwriting guru" by Ian Parker, www.newyorker.com. October 20, 2003.

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