Lajos Egri Quotes

I was always more interested in story songs, things with a point of view... and things that informed me.

You can't tell any kind of a story without having some kind of a theme, something to say between the lines.

I want stories that tackle things.

I write plays about big, intense subjects.

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

I love drama. I love to play an arc.

There is no essential difference between the material of comedy and tragedy. All depends on the point of view of the dramatist, which, by clever emphasis, he tries to make the point of view of his audience.

Technique is of less interest than character and story.

My work as a screenwriter has influenced my fiction. Writing screenplays forces you to consider many elements regarding story structure and other narrative devices that can be used to enhance the infinitely more complex demands of a novel.

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas.

We were given clear concrete tools. The course did a great job demystifying the art of fiction writing and fostering confidence. The instructor brought complex concepts down to earth. I will miss coming here every week.

As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people.

Language description and metaphors seem readily available. The things I have to work harder at are plot, pacing, and form.

I did try to write stories in college because I was interested in writing, and I was interested in the sound of language, but I was just no good at narrative and at fiction.

Show me the story. I just want to tell a story that pulls me forward.

You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end.

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.

I think plays have nothing to do with one's own personal life. Not in my experience, anyway. The stuff of drama has to do, not with your subject matter, anyway, but with how you treat it. Drama includes pain, loss, regret - that's what drama is about!

The hardest thing is to write a play, because you have to hold their attention for two hours, and if you let them go for five minutes, they're gone for good.

Drama is more focused, and it reveals itself to you, whereas comedy is just right there when you first read it.

As a storyteller, you have the story that you tell, and you have the way you can tell it, and both are equally important.

I've learned things about the craft of writing and about structuring a book and about character development and so on that I've just learned on the fly.

I'm very interested in storytelling and anything that plays with structure.

For me, the first thing is to tell a good story.

Screenwriting is about condensing.