Elmore Leonard Quotes

You're always looking for good scripts and when they're not always forthcoming you go mad.

I get a script and it's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.

I worked in script development, many years ago, and read a lot of scripts. Between that and the scripts I've read as an actor, and I'm a writer as well, I think I have a pretty good sense about whether the bones of a story are there and whether the structure is intact.

I became a script writer with absolutely no idea of how to write a script whatsoever. I still feel a bit of an outsider in that regard. If I can maintain that approach to screenwriting, it can continue to be enjoyable.

It certainly made a film writing career for me.

I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.

I'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.

Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.

I didn't write 'Snow White' for any class, but I got bitten by the screenwriting bug and wrote a couple of scripts in my spare time instead of going to keg parties or something.

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world. I always had a mind for characters and dialogue, and my head was filled with that stuff, so it seemed like a good place to start.

Good scripts are hard to find.

I have been sent three or four scripts for television series, but there wasn't anything I really wanted to do. I want to tell a good story, whether it's a TV show, a movie, whatever. That's really my No. 1 criteria.

I'm sure that everything you do contributes to the sort of novel that you write. A lot of actors have an understanding of drama and a good ear for dialogue and also the rhythm of speech. Similarly, my 16 years in radio drama has influenced me. You only have 45 minutes, or 7,000 words, to tell a story, so every scene has to have a point.

As far as I know, if you take your time, write a good script and make a good film, then give the audience time, they will accept it.

I am obsessed with story. I had a late awakening in life. In college was the first time that I understood what you could do with a story and what a good novel is - literary value and subtext and irony and everything.

I stopped writing short fiction early on - I was never really good at it, and I never liked the results. So I stopped trying to fit the material I was working with into these tidy little short fiction packages.

I've never read a screenplay in advance. You trust the artist.

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

I did plays in college, and I have half of a play. But I'm kind of stuck. I keep revisiting it so maybe it will move somewhere. There's something about plays where you can feel that sense of artifice at any moment.

I might not write fiction in the literary sense. But I write very well. My characters are good. My dialogue is good. And my stories are really involving.

It's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.

By the time I wrote 'Any Given Sunday' or 'Bats,' I sort of knew what my job was in terms of what a writer of dialogue does.

I feel that one of the fields that I need to learn a lot is screenwriting. I used to write my own screenplays, but it's just that I remember that at that time, I was saying to myself, 'I wish one day I will meet a screenwriter that will help me because I feel that I need to learn.'