David Lindsay-Abaire Quotes

I don't see myself directing things I don't write because, to me, directing was just an extension of the writing process.

I imagine the proverb about too many cooks spoiling the broth can be applied to writing as well as anything else. The poetical or literary broth is better cooked by one person.

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

To me, the most important thing is the script. I would never make a movie that I didn't write. I wouldn't know how to.

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.

I can sit in the room with the other writers and just keep saying no until there's something I really like or until I come up with something. In that respect the proportion of what's mine and what's other people's is controlled by me. It isn't even fair to talk about.

I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.

The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.

This is where I begin to do the writing. I am now going to be the pen and not the paper.

I enjoy writing scripts. I can find out what happens. With an outline, I feel like I'm doing an architectural diagram of something.

I've always been a writer, actually. Not many people assume that, but I kinda keep quiet about anything that I do until I'm ready to show it. It keeps me humble and also makes me work towards a goal.

I don't think I'd ever write anything that I don't also direct just because it's so hard and painful to write as it is.

I didn't direct [the Taboo episodes]. I wrote all of them.

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

Stallone is a great writer. He wrote one of the best screenplays ever written. Rocky. It is one of the biggest classics of all time. I think in the past, he was shying away from writing his own stuff, because there is a lot of pressure when you star in something that you write.

I never get sick of writing my own stories because there's a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It's relaxing, actually, to write.

When you write, you're alone in a room. And when someone reads a book, they're alone in a room, too, usually. It's a really intimate exchange. And so people ask me where I get the boldness to talk about this or that, but I didn't feel like it required any sort of courage, because I was alone. Sometimes it feels weird for people to read it.

I wish I was one of those people who could write script after script and pages and pages. I can only aspire to do that.

Writing is basically a job for people who like punching themselves in the face, I’m pretty sure.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

I hear people talk in my head and I write it down. I choose where they live and how they dress to be real. That person wouldn't wear that. That person wouldn't say that. She can't afford to live like that. All that bullshit that so many movies have in them. I don't want to see that.

I found myself in network always trying to play catch up because once things get going there's no time to fix this and that. And also the writing, it was more inclined to be by committee in network which drowns out the purity and the voice of the show.

I think now that I've tried directing, I'm not interested in doing adaptations anymore. I could do an adaptation of someone else's work that I would write, but the idea of taking someone else's material entirely doesn't interest me. One of the things that I found really helpful, at least in my mind - and I've never discussed this with the actors or with the people I work with - is that being a neophyte in directing, I feel like I have a kind of authority simply because I'm the writer as well.

To be a writer you should read, write and talk to people, hear their knowledge, hear their problems. Be a good listener. The rest will come.