Robert McKee · 466 pages
Rating: (9K votes)
“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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.”
― Robert McKee, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.”
― Robert McKee, quote from 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, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“In comedy laughter settles all arguments.”
― Robert McKee, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.”
― Robert McKee, quote from 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, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.”
― Robert McKee, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“in comedy laughter settles all argument
فى الكوميديا، الضحك ينهى أى جدل”
― Robert McKee, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“Stories are the currency of human relationships.”
― Robert McKee, quote from 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,”
― Robert McKee, quote from 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, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Robert McKee
Born place: Detroit, Michigan, The United States
See more on GoodReads
“Ellie had a feeling he thought she was exaggerating. "I am not jesting. Yesterday she presented me with two lists. The first consisted of chores I must perform in addition to those I already do."
"What, did she have you cleaning out the chimney?" Charles teased.
"Yes!" Ellie burst out. "Yes, and it was not a joke!"”
― Julia Quinn, quote from Brighter Than the Sun
“There were some people with a gift for conviction - a talent for cutting a line through the jumbled phenomena of world affairs and saying, 'I'm in: this is my position.' Audrey had it. All of the Litvinoffs had it, to some extent. It was a genetic thing, perhaps. Jean had seen a film once, about a troop of French soldiers in World I who were charged with getting a cannon to their fellow soldiers, trapped under enemy fire. For weeks, they carted the cannon around the countryside as their number slowly dwindled. Some were killed. Some deserted. Some collapsed from exhausted. But no matter how desperate the situation became - even when it emerged that the cannon itself was probably defective - the captain of the group kept going forward, refusing to give up. Audrey's attachment to her dogma was a bit like that, Jean thought. For decades now, she had been dragging about the same unwieldy burden of a priori convictions, believing herself honor-bound to protect them against destruction at all costs. No new intelligence, no rational argument, could cause her to falter in her mission.”
― Zoë Heller, quote from The Believers
“A spontaneous proposition deserves a spontaneous response."
"You gave me a spontaneous response when you said no.”
― Jeri Smith-Ready, quote from Requiem for the Devil
“And yet there was something about his strength, his arrogance, his sheer size that got under my skin. He probably couldn't even spell vanilla. He was probably selfish in the sack. Probably selfish and greedy and...unsophisticated. And hung like a horse.”
― Josh Lanyon, quote from Fatal Shadows
“Our elders told us this was the best way to deal with white people. Be silent until they get nervous, then they will start talking. They will keep talking, and if you stay silent, they will say too much. Then you will be able to see into their hearts and know what they really mean. Then you will know what to do.” “I imagine it works,” I said.”
― Kent Nerburn, quote from Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder
Out of the Easy
Mom & Me & Mom
Gentle Warrior
Lady of Avalon
The Sin Eater’s Daug...
Where the Mountain M...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
