Screenwriter Quotes

“The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught.”

“Remember, Montag, we're the happiness boys. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought.”

“The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.”

“You'd type like hell. I spent $9.80 and in nine days I had Fahrenheit 451.”

“If someone tells you to do something for money, tell them to go to hell.”

“You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead”

“There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.”

“I am not a science fiction writer. I am a fantasy writer. But the label got put on me and stuck.”

“If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed. You fail only if you stop writing.”

“You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

“Surprise is where creativity comes in.”

“You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.”

“In that film Love Story, there's a line, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you're sorry every day for some little thing or other.”

“..holding a book but reading the empty spaces.”

“But most of all, I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they are going. Sometimes I even go to Fun parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what? People don't talk about anything.”

“Treasure this day and Treasure yourself, truly, neither will ever happen again.”

“When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?”

“Savory...that's a swell word. And Basil and Betel. Capsicum. Curry. All great. But Relish, now, Relish with a capital R. No argument, that' the best.”

“I love writing, it's the center of my life. If you don't love what you do, you'd better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don't have a reason for living.”

“Like every beginner, I have thought you could beat, pummel and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.”

“I think we're doing a dreadful job of educating.”

“That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts.”

“People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.”