James Nesbitt Quotes

If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.

For me, it's always about what's on the page. I have tremendous respect for writing. When you recognize good writing, and you're lucky enough to get it, like with 'Lost,' that's what I follow.

Every actor just wants good writing.

Writing a great script - not just a good one, but a great one - is almost an impossible task.

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

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.

There are a lot of good stories out there, but I haven't found too many great scripts.

It always comes down to script and characters.

How can you turn down Marks and Gran? Their scripts are so rich in texture.

The elegance of a really good screenplay, I admire it. I can't do it.

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

Lizzy Weiss is such a great writer, and she really writes for the performances.

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.

When you have really good writing, you're compelled by the actors who are in it, and you may think it's the actors or the design or the filmmaking of it, but then you're like, 'Well, the base is a really rich story that these guys have created.'

I'm just a sucker for a good script.

You can't improv off of bad writing. Then you have to actually create your objective, which is really hard to do in an element without the skeleton to go off of.

When you've got good writing, you can kind of give up all the research, in a way, and start just following the emotional integrity of the journey of your character.

On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.

The cool thing about Kyle Killen, he writes really defined characters. I was a big fan of 'Awake' and also 'Lone Star.' I just think that he's a really, really special writer, and complex and deep, and a really smart dude.

It's a lot easier to act when the writing is good. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to figure out 'Well, why did I say this next?'

I am lucky enough to have Aaron Sorkin write what I have to say.

I wouldn't know a good script if it bit me in the face.