Guy Kawasaki Quotes

No music. No rituals. At home I write in my office or on the laptop in the kitchen where our puppy likes to sleep, and I love his company. But I've trained myself to be able to work anywhere, and I write on trains, planes, in automobiles (if I'm not the driver), airports, hotel rooms. I travel often. If I couldn't write wherever I was I would get little done. I also can write in short bursts. Fifteen minutes are enough to move a story forward.

I enjoy both acting and screenwriting, in completely different ways. You have more creative freedom with writing because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

I've written so many things over the years that I don't want to go back to being just a scriptwriter. I'm in what I consider to be the enviable position of all I have to do is come up with the idea and write an outline that makes it seem like it's a viable idea that will interest people, and then other people write the scripts -- and I become the executive producer or the producer, depending on how much involvement I have, and I get a creative credit and then move on to the next project.

If you have a book to write, write it. If you want to record an album, record it. No need to wait for someone in a cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you're worthy.

The power of yes: that's what allows creativity to breathe and to come in. That's what allows your ideas to become living, breathing, moving dreams in action.

I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else.

When I write a project, it might be something that I want to do and then when I look at it, I'm actually like, "I kind of don't want to direct it." I don't know why, I still love it enough for it to be made and to support it, but I don't want to direct it. I just give it to other directors and they do a good job!

For me, directing is like writing with meat. I can write live, in real time, and change things and be confident that I'm helping the movie.

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.

It started off for me as just wanting to be an actor and sort of resenting in a weird way being expected to write as well as be a comedian and an improviser. And then you think about it for a minute, and I smartened up and realized that the only way to sustain a career is to generate your own material. Or to be in control of your career as best you can. And in allowing yourself to do that it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And then you're like "Oh, producing is a thing."

The heartbreak that it might not happen wasn't something that I wanted to face with any more weight. Then, when I got the call to go ahead I never thought for a second as I was approaching it who I would get - that would come later. Again, I think the idea was that I now had the rights to make the movie and I can start writing it but if I have to wait another 10 years before I find an actor that's right for it, I'd be very happy to do that.

I never had a movie that I wanted to do turned down in my whole life. I always write the script first so it speaks for itself.

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

It's an all-inclusive package, when you get to be creative and run a little country while you're on a set and doing it with people that you enjoy working with and you all have a say in it.

I'm really open to just about anything but I think the real dream is to be able to write my own thing.

I don't think fast enough on my feet in terms of the writing to change the script too much when I'm shooting it. I like to have it set and done and know that I feel good about it and I might add a few lines here and there while we're shooting, if I think of a new joke, I might toss it in, but for the most part, I try to stick to the written script and have all the latitude exist within that.

Directing a movie precludes me from being involved in any greater way. But, the job was never to do more, it was always to enable. Sometimes as a producer, you're creating and writing it, or sometimes you're writing and directing it, or other times you're there from the very beginning.

Make the movie your way. Surround yourself with people who know more than you.

A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.

You don't really have to believe what you write in a blog for more than the moment when you're writing it. You don't bring the same solemnity that you would bring to an actual essay.

Obviously it's easier when I' m doing the adapting myself. But my feeling is, your potential upside far outweighs the downside. Ultimately, they [moviemakers] can't change your book. Your book remains on the shelf the way you wrote it. If they make a great movie of your book, then you have the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars of advertising for your book. If the movie's not that good, that doesn't mean the book's not good. It doesn't change what you've already written. It has the potential to reach more people.

It's really liberating and fun to be writing stuff for myself, and really have the freedom to say what I want to say and not really have to think about what somebody else is going to say or have to edit myself to speak from someone else's vision.

I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.

Novelists get to direct the perfect films. We get to cast every part. We dress the set exactly as we wish.

Wherein we discover that many of the "rules" for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think.