Teaching

A creative writing course provides experienced editors for inspired amateurs. – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

My Love of Quotes

I think Vonnegut was dead-on with his defense of writing courses and how writing can be “taught.”  I love quotes because I enjoy basking in the succinct wisdom of others.  Since 2000 I have been fortunate enough to be invited to “teach” a UCLA 434 graduate seminar in screenwriting each year.  It’s a demanding 10-week quarter for no more than eight students in the screenwriting program.  In that time each student is required to write a feature-length screenplay – no small task.  In addition to sharing “Quotes of the Week,” I selectively sprinkle them throughout the course during lecture and discussion.  In sum, they have become a handy compilation of observations, wisdom, and advice applicable to the screenwriting profession – a mini-tutorial that I find practical and inspiring.  My collection has grown over the years, and students have even forwarded me some of their favorite quotes.  But most have been culled from books, articles, and interviews that I’ve stumbled upon here and there.  I cannot attest to the complete accuracy or authenticity of all the comments, but it’s the thought that counts.  Not all the quotes are from writers or filmmakers, but I still found their remarks useful for screenwriters.  I’ve accumulated too many to share here, but one day I plan to gather them into a “Strain’s Quotes for Screenwriters” collection.  For now, these are a few of my favorites.

Strain’s Quotes for Screenwriters

THE PROCESS

• All the genuine deep delight of life is in showing people the mud-pies you have made; and life is at its best when we confidingly recommend our mud-pies to each other’s sympathetic consideration. — J.M. Thornburn
• Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. — Williams Zinser
• I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o-clock every morning. — Peter De Vries
• An artist painting a picture should have at his side a man with a club to hit him over the head when the picture was finished. — John Singer Sargent
• Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent. — Steve Martin
• I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director’s work. — Harold Ramis
• Complete control can be the death of a work. — Andy Goldsworthy
• When you focus on the journey and not the arrival, then your art becomes more like a treasured artifact of the creative process. — Don Hahn
• Inspiration is for amateurs.  The rest of us just show up and get to work. — Chuck Close
• You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself. — Leonard Cohen

THE CRAFT

• Good dialogue is not real speech; it’s the illusion of real speech. — Ernest Hemingway
• A screenplay is a blunt instrument. — Bill Menger
• Good style, to me, is unseen style. — Sidney Lumet
• There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise. — Robert McKee
• The end is in the beginning. — T.S. Eliot
• I write five words and erase seven. — Dorothy Parker
• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. — Mark Twain
• Good prose is like a window pane. — George Orwell
• A film with a brilliant first scene and last scene is halfway to greatness.  All the rest is padding. — Howard Suber
• You can never know enough about your characters. — W. Somerset Maugham
• Bad guys are not bad guys twenty-four hours a day. — Elmore Leonard

SUCCESS/FAILURE

• No single movie or event makes or breaks your career. Everything can be undone, including success. — Linda Obst
• You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. — Wayne Gretzky
• In this profession it’s a long walk between drinks. — Truman Capote
• Find out who you are and do it on purpose. — Dolly Parton
• If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same… — Rudyard Kipling
• In this town, your character is measured by how you handle defeat, not success. –Art  Linson
• “No” is just a moment in time. — Brian Grazer
• Do you realize how good you have to be to strike out 2000 times? — Casey Stengel
• Nothing is as dangerous as a sure thing. — Stanley Kubrick
• Failure is a badge of honor; it means you risked failure.” — Charlie Kaufman

HOLLYWOOD

• Getting the job is the job. — Richard Walter
• One of the most difficult things for a writer in this business to accept is the uncertain fate of one’s work. — Michael Crichton
• Hollywood is an empire of ephemeral enthusiasms. — William Froug
• No one will ever make your movie.  They will only make their movie. — Millard Kaufman
• When I feel like being a director, I write a novel. — John Irving
• Hollywood is the one place on earth where you could die of encouragement. –Dorothy Parker
• If you keep your eye on the doughnut and do your work, that’s all you can control.  You can’t control any of what’s out there, outside yourself. — David Lynch
• Hollywood is the only town where you cannot fail.  You can only quit trying. — Dennis Foley
• Don’t face the facts. — Ruth Gordon
• The most important person in the motion picture process is the writer… and we must do everything in our power to prevent them from ever realizing it. — Irving Thalberg

AND FINALLY…

• Enjoy every sandwich. — Warren Zevon