Lily Collins Quotes

Some of the material out there - I don't want to say that it's all bad - but there's a lot of bad stuff out there. You just continue reading scripts, and eventually you find something you connect with.

It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

It doesn't help anybody to put out a bad script.

My easiest judgment for a script is 'do I want to keep reading it?'

Producing a series is like being Lewis and Clark: You know where you're going, you just don't know how you're going to get there. When people say, 'You should create a bible for your show,' I say, 'You don't want a bible. It'll prevent you from making discoveries along the way.' And that's what happened on 'The X-Files.'

When you have a good script you're almost in more trouble than when you have a terrible script.

I have likened writing a novel to going on a journey, with some notion of the destination I will arrive at, but not the whole picture - which emerges gradually as a series of revelations, as the journey goes along.

There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.

If you are still thinking about a script after five or ten years, that's a sign that it's good - not that it's stale. And the opposite is true - if everyone wants to make your movie, that's a sign that it probably sucks.

Good scripts have always been, I think, hard to find. Good storytelling, good writing - it's just not easy. I have made it a point that - if I'm going to put the energy into doing this work - I will wait until I find something I'm really happy with.

I find that the projects I enjoy signing up to at the moment are with a director who's interested in the script - isn't completely sure what the movie is and isn't concerned about it. He's just interested in going on the journey and discovering it.

I find that with every script I get, I go, 'Who knew this? This is so cool!'

For all the hundreds of scripts that are out there, there's not that many that are amazing.

When I was in drama development, you hear anywhere between 500 to 600 pitches a season, and you do feel like you hit the wall. But I will never say, 'No, I won't hear that.'

If my film fails, I never think it was because the script was weak.

Whenever I hear the narration for a new film, I have this process back home where my mother reads all my scripts.

It takes a year for us to generate a script that is ready to shoot. There are maybe 20 drafts of a script. And, each time, someone saying 'I don't really love this,' we discuss it for 15 minutes.

There aren't enough good scripts.

I started out working as a script editor and storyliner.

I think the most rewarding part for me is kind of not knowing where the story's going next, and then finding out and being blown away by it.

Good writing is often about trying to investigate something you feel is missing and trying to put it back.

Wherever the good stories are, I'm trying to place myself there.

I look for scripts that give me a gut feeling that this is going to work.