Robert McKee Quotes

Creativity is choice-making.

The material of literary talent is words; the material of story talent is life itself.

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

A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

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

Stories build cultures by answering the big questions.

The dirty secret of art is you don't have to show people your bad writing. That's what we have the delete key for.

Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas.

Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work.

Mastery of craft frees the subconscious.

As he chooses, he is.

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

The only way to know the truth is to witness him make choices under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire.

Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.

Never sleep with anybody who has more problems than you do.

Talent without craft is like fuel without an engine, it burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.

Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

In comedy laughter settles all arguments.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

The mark of a master is to select only a few moments, but give us a lifetime.

You do not keep the audience's interest by giving it information, but by withholding information ...

Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.

If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.

Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative. Write only what you believe.

Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality,

Quality storytelling inspires quality dialogue.

When society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates.

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

Dialogue concentrates meaning; conversation dilutes it.

Leaders use story to author the future.

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

It seems to me that the civilized human being is a skeptic someone who believes nothing at face value.

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

No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.

Thought can be controlled and manipulated, but emotion is willful and unpredictable.

Stories are the currency of human relationships.

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

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

( ... )while it's true that the unexamined life is not worth living, it's also true that the unlived life isn't worth examining.

To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.

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.

No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

I cannot be a character in a bad movie. I can't be.

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

To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.

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

Story is about originality, not duplication

of all genres Fantasy is the most rigid and structurally conventional.

Oh, by the way, I tend to use a lot of profanities. I do that for a reason: I like it.

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

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

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

Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.

We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.

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

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