Matthew Quick Quotes

I really want to do film, but I want to do the right film. The truth for me is that I'm really driven by stories. So there are stories I want to tell, and if it's a good story then I want to do it, whatever genre it is.

I look for the character to be something interesting, the script to have a good story and be original, and a director that I admire.

One day I had an idea for a movie. Everything came after that.

We don't feel pressure of, 'Let's make this really raunchy.' It's more about making a good story, which is 10 times harder. The raunchy stuff's really easy for us.

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

Anybody can write a film script 'cuz it has been reduced to a formula.

Creatively, it's great, because when you write your own movies, you get to create whatever you want.

Film-makers are greedy people - we want good stories and good subjects.

If I write a cop show, it's not up to me to decide how different it is from 'Law & Order.' I had screenwriters go on and on and on about how their cop show isn't like any other cop show on TV. They made very good points, and it absolutely doesn't matter. It's entirely up to the audience to decide.

I keep writing stories that I might want to bring to life one day.

It's not about Hollywood, it's always about a good script for me.

The technology is really where all of the changes have taken place, but the fundamentals of a good story being the basis of every good picture, and really the only basis still remains the rule, more so today, I think, because we've unfortunately weaned an audience from birth to kind of mindless movies.

As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.

You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved because the movie is almost always bad when you do that.

My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.

I loved movies, but I can't remember ever really wanting to be an actress, and I certainly didn't imagine ever being in a movie. I think I wanted to be a writer.

There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.

I started writing because I wanted to write scripts, but I wasn't very good at it. Then I started writing short stories, sort of as treatments for the film scripts, and I found I enjoyed writing short stories far more than I enjoyed writing film scripts. Then the short stories got longer and longer and suddenly, I had novels.

If I get lucky and I can choose, I would always choose a really good story and screenplay, even if I don't know the director. If there's a good screenplay, there's a chance that something good is going to happen.

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 and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.