“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” ( Maya Angelou)

“What is freedom of expression?…without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” (Salman Rushdie)

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” (Anton Chekhov)

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” (Bill Cosby)

“I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.” (Samuel Johnson)

“Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.” (Author Unknown)

“For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.” (Ernest Hemingway)

‘Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.’ (George Bernard Shaw)

“With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. The script must be something that has the power to do this” (Akira Kurosawa)

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.” (William Goldman)

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” (Alfred Hitchcock)

“You can make a bad movie from a good script, but you can’t make a good movie from a bad script.” (Anonymous)

“An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark — that is critical genius.” (Billy Wilder, late writer/director)

“Without conflict you have no action; without action you have no character; without character you have no story; and without story you have no screenplay.” (Syd Field, The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver)

“An essential part of all screenwriting is finding places where silence works better than words, finding the right visual arena, or image, to tell the story.” (Syd Field, The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver)

“In a sense, a movie is constantly being rewritten.  The various contributions of the director and the actors, the music, sound, camera,  and editing, are so powerful that the movie is always changing.  All these factors add digressions, increase or subtract from clarity, change the mood, or tip the balance of the story.  It’s like watching a column of water whose color keeps changing as different dyes are added.  I think it’s important for the writer to understand and, ideally, enjoy the process.” (Sidney Lumet, Making Movies)

“Good storytelling lets the audience relive events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices, and emotions that led the character to do what he did.” (John Truby, The Anatomy of Story)

“The idea must promise CONFLICT.  That’s the heart and soul of screenwriting.” (Lew Hunter, Screenwriting 434)

“Ask yourself not only what should happen next but how it will affect your hero’s character.” (Ronald B. Tobias, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them.)

“Contrary to what you may believe, you’re not trying to write a great story.  You’re not writing a blueprint so a studio can make your movie.  You’re not writing something that’s going to cure cancer or win a Nobel Prize.  What you’re writing is ACTOR BAIT.” (William M. Akers, Your Screenplay Sucks!)

“If there is no power struggle, there is no conflict.” (Robin U. Russin and William Missouri Downs, Screenplay, Writing the Picture)

“Structure is the skeleton on which you hang the meat of your story.” (David Trottier, The Screenwriter’s Bible).

“What is character but the determination of incident?  And what is incident but the illumination of character?” (Henry James, The Art of Fiction)

“Structure is like gravity: It is the glue that holds the story in place; it is the base, the foundation, the spine, the skeleton of the story.  And it is this relationship between the parts and the whole that holds the screenplay together.” (Syd Field, The Foundations of Screenwriting)

“A writer moves back and forth between working with the story as a whole and working with its small details.” (Dr. Linda Seger, Advanced Screenwriting)

“One of the best ways to create movement from one scene to the next is to imply an action at the end of one scene that is then carried out in the following scene.” (Dr. Linda Seger, Advanced Screenwriting)

“When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason:  They’re moved by a desire to touch the audience.” (Robert McKee, Story)

“A beautifully told story is a symphonic unity in which structure, setting, character, genre, and idea meld seamlessly.   To find their harmony, the writer must study the elements of story as if they were instruments of an orchestra – first separately, then in concert.” (Robert McKee, Story)

“Believable characters are essential … on the screen.  Characters must be durable, fallible, and able to grow and change. ” (Linda N. Edelstein, PhD., Writer’s Guide to Character Traits)

“Your main character should be a different person at the end of the book than at the beginning.” (Ronald B. Tobias, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them)

“Plot is your compass.  You should have a general idea of the direction you’re headed in, and if you write something that doesn’t specifically relate to the advancement of the plot, question it. ” (Ronald B. Tobias, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them)

“Art does not come from ideas.  Art does not come from the mind.  Art comes from the place where you dream.  Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.” (Robert Olen Butler, From Where You Dream, the Process of Writing Fiction)

“If only we could pull out our brains and use only our eyes.” (Pablo Picasso)

“The plot doesn’t just move ahead, it spins and intensifies as it goes.  It is the difference between velocity (a constant speed) and acceleration (an increasing speed).  And the rule is:  It’s not enough for the plot to go forward, it must go forward faster, and with more complexity, to the climax.” (Blake Snyder, Save the Cat!)

“Character and story come first.  Before anything.  Certainly before all that Act One, Two, and Three crapola.” (William M. Akers, Your Screenplay Sucks!)

“The work habit that underlies virtually all writing problems is the tendency to write and edit simultaneously.” (Henriette Anne Klauser, Writing on Both Sides of the Brain)

“A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.” (Karl Krauss)

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” (Albert Einstein)

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.” (William Faulkner)