Quotes by Producers - Page 38

‎If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot…reading is the creative center of a writer’s life…you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
Stephen King
Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.
Stephen King
As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?
Stephen King
If we can't write diversity into sci-fi, then what's the point? You don't create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.
Jane Espenson
Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.
Stephen King
When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.
Stephen King
Margaret: Can I - can I just say something for the future?Leo: Yeah.Margaret: I can sign the President's name. I have his signature down pretty good.Leo: You can sign the President's name?Margaret: Yeah.Leo: On a document removing him from power and handing it to someone else?Margaret: Yeah! Or... do you think the White House Counsel would say that was a bad idea?Leo: I think the White House Counsel would say it was a coup d'etat!Margaret: Well. I'd probably end up doing some time for that.Leo: I would think. And what the hell were you doing practicing the President's signature?Margaret: It was just for fun.
Aaron Sorkin
You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair ... Come to it any way but lightly.
Stephen King
Toby: All right. It couldn't have gone far, right?Sam: No.Toby: Somewhere in this building...is our talent.
Aaron Sorkin
Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?
Stephen King
I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.
Stephen King
I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they "don't have time to read." This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.
Stephen King
Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.
Stephen King
I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.
Stephen King
I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, Giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy: I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like.
Aaron Sorkin
you must not come lightly to the blank page.
Stephen King
The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.
Stephen King
Mrs. Landingham, does the President have free time this morning?" "The President has nothing but free time, Toby. Right now he's in the residence eating Cheerios and enjoying Regis and Kathie Lee. Should I get him for you?" "Sarcasm's a disturbing thing coming from a woman of your age, Mrs. Landingham." "What age would that be, Toby?""Late twenties?" "Atta boy.
Aaron Sorkin
If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.
Stephen King
If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.
Stephen King
If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page.This is how we go on.
Stephen King
The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.
Stephen King
When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.
Stephen King
I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.
Stephen King
Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.
Stephen King
You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all.
Joss Whedon
Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.
Stephen King
It is the tale, not he who tells it.
Stephen King
What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.
Alfred Hitchcock
Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.
Stephen King
Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.
Joss Whedon
Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.
Stephen King
You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
Stephen King
So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.
Stephen King
If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.
Stephen King
When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.
Stephen King
Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.
Stephen King
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.
Stephen King
Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.
Joss Whedon
In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.
Stephen King
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Stephen King
People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.
Joss Whedon
A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.
Stephen King
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
Stephen King
You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.
Ellen DeGeneres
Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.
Stephen King
I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.
Joss Whedon
A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.
Stephen King
The scariest moment is always just before you start.
Stephen King
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
Stephen King
you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.
Stephen King
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Stephen King
The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
Stephen King
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
Stephen King
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
Stephen King
Help us to be true, Lord. Help us to stand.
Stephen King
If we can just let go and trust that things will work out they way they're supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.
Goldie Hawn
A life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is...like a life without pictures.
Stephen King
Stain BoyOf all the super heroes,the strangest one by far,doesn't have a special power,or drive a fancy car.next to Superman and batman, I guess he must seem tame.But to me he is quite special,and Stain Boy is his name.He can't fly around tall buildings,or outrun a speeding train,the only talent he seems to haveis to leave a nasty stain.Sometimes I know it bothers him,that he can't run or swim or fly,and because of this one ability,his dry cleaning bill is sky-high.
Tim Burton
Robot BoyMr. an Mrs. Smith had a wonderful life.They were a normal, happy husband and wife.One day they got news that made Mr. Smith glad.Mrs. Smith would would be a momwhich would make him the dad!But something was wrong with their bundle of joy.It wasn't human at all,it was a robot boy!He wasn't warm and cuddlyand he didn't have skin.Instead there was a cold, thin layer of tin.There were wires and tubes sticking out of his head.He just lay there and stared,not living or dead.The only time he seemed alive at allwas with a long extension cordplugged into the wall.Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor,"What have you done to my boy?He's not flesh and blood,he's aluminum alloy!"The doctor said gently,"What I'm going to saywill sound pretty wild.But you're not the father of this strange looking child.You see, there still is some questionabout the child's gender,but we think that its fatheris a microwave blender."The Smith's lives were now filledwith misery and strife.Mrs. Smith hated her husband,and he hated his wife.He never forgave her unholy alliance:a sexual encounterwith a kitchen appliance.And Robot Boygrew to be a young man.Though he was often mistakenfor a garbage can.
Tim Burton