Story Quotes

“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“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.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“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.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“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.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“When talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“(...)while it's true that the unexamined life is not worth living, it's also true that the unlived life isn't worth examining.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“In life two negatives don't make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“In comedy laughter settles all arguments.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Stories are the currency of human relationships.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“You do not keep the audience's interest by giving it information, but by withholding information ....”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“in comedy laughter settles all argument
فى الكوميديا، الضحك ينهى أى جدل”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting