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Screenwriting Quotes


Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. JOHN LE CARRÉ

SPEED
Don't mistake my silence for weakness. Nobody plans murders out loud.

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Ouch. That's a great one, Speed. How's that:

"(Making movies is) 80% script and 20% getting great actors. There's nothing else to it."
WILLIAM WYLER

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"Well, I found out, and I found out hard, I found out forever. Through the sweat and the tears I shed over my first script, I saw a great truth, one of those eternal, universal truths that serve to make you feel much worse than you did when you started. And that is that no writer, whether he writes from love or from money, can condescend to what he writes. What makes it harder in screenwriting…is the money he gets"
Dorothy Parker

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Monster, that's a great one.

I've been looking for a Sue Grafton quote, but no luck so far. She soured on screenwriting and turned to novels after she considered her scripts ruined in production.

SPEED
Don't mistake my silence for weakness. Nobody plans murders out loud.

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To make a great film you need three things: the script, the script, and the script. --Alfred Hitchcock

SPEED
Don't mistake my silence for weakness. Nobody plans murders out loud.

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Give me a good script, and I’ll be a hundred times better as a director. --George Cukor

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The key is – don’t monkey around with the script. Then everything usually goes pretty well. – Steven Soderbergh

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