Steven Moffat Quotes

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

My only close-to-game-plan is to follow good writing. If the writing is in TV or if it's in theater or in film, that's it. It doesn't really matter what the medium is.

There's no such thing as easy, but it's easier when a script is good.

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.

Good scripts are hard to find.

My preference is for good writing. It doesn't matter if it's for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I've had problems with writers, it doesn't matter how great of an actor you are. If the writing is bad, you're going to struggle.

When I was in New York, a lot of my friends were studying filmmaking and would bring their scripts to me, as I was a good script doctor. I would read their scripts and make corrections to them for $20 per script and was fascinated by films.

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.

Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland, there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit and talent... Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.

I didn't get paid to write professionally until my first episode of 'Kyle XY,' which was the fourth episode of the first season.

When we first started to write our first movie, 'You Are Going To Prison,' we wanted it to be crazy and unique, brand new, our voice, not like anything that'd ever been before. It took us about a year to write our first script.

I'm just after the best script I can get.

Writing a screenplay is an act of faith. First, that it's interesting enough that anyone would want to make it. Secondly, that anybody would want to watch it, let alone enjoy it.

I like writing because when I grow up, I'm going to be a script writer and a director.

I was a history major, but that was because it took the fewest requirements of any major. In my sophomore year, I started getting back into making movies. My senior year, I took playwriting classes, and I feel like that's where I learned to be a writer.

The intensity of the story breaking on 'Vampire' has never been easy. Every week, you're starting with a blank board and trying to make a new movie. There's no formula; there's no franchise to hang your hat on.

I've been a writer since I was 13. I've been writing scripts and having pitch meetings. So, when I do see people like Brit Marling getting things done, it lets me know that it's possible. It basically just tells me, 'Dude, get to work!' For some reason, I think that I'm not doing enough work.

If you write a good line, you write a good line, and the best line wins in television. It doesn't matter if you're the guy who gets the coffee or if you're the showrunner - best line wins. That's the beauty of television collaboration.

Writing a script is hard, I've discovered.

It's funny; before I started writing professionally, I had a job logging video footage for behind-the-scenes footage for special features.

I consider myself a good screenwriter.

Your average sitcom writer is a very intellectual person.

I never set out to write a script that is 'topical.'

Writing a script consumes so much of time.

We can't make movies without scripts, and there's no cost to writing a script, so my advice to newcomers is do it yourself: Write your own script, shoot your shorts, edit your shorts.