Corey Stoll Quotes

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

When you're trying to force things in a script, it seems like it's getting somewhere, but it isn't real or interesting. All the bad material you've written becomes an albatross around your neck. So I really don't like writing a lot of bad stuff, I prefer to just keep narrowing it down to stuff I think is solid.

It makes a world of difference when you start with an amazing script.

I eventually want to do writing on all the films, but not necessarily to be the writer. Writing is a painful, painful thing; it really is.

If you get a bad script, then you start expending energy trying to make a silk purse of a sow's ear. When the script's as good as those on 'Game of Thrones,' say, I don't think there was a single occasion where any of us thought there was a bad scene.

I've written plenty of scripts that sucked.

What one's goal should be is just to become a better writer and to tell different kinds of stories.

I was writing novels at eight. It was a science fiction epic, which went by the unimprovable title of 'Another Kind of Warrior.' I'd write it beginning to end, but when I'd finished it, I was another year older. The quality of writing and thought changed radically, so I'd start it again. I re-wrote that same book until I was 16.

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.

Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.

Ultimately, the first, best step in getting your work noticed is to write good work. If people don't engage in your writing, no amount of serialization or free downloads is going to matter. You have to write something worth reading, and often it takes time to get at that level.

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

It's a great luxury to have the writer with you on a new play because you can write and re-write, just trying to get the arc of the story, of their relationship right.

It's all in the writing. The writing has got to be there. Whether that's dialogue or character, or whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as they've done something special, than you can do something special.

'Justified' had such dead-on beautiful scripts that you didn't want to mess with it.

I read a lot of script. In my opinion, most of them aren't good or aren't about people.

Where I thrive is with my hands on the keyboard or my pen on the paper. One of the things I get to do is I get to rewrite. I rewrite, and I work hard on my scripts. You can rewrite until you're 'perfect,' and that's something that's safe for me.

Nothing beats a good part with good writers that you get to come back to year after year.

I want to be a better writer. I want to learn and grow, to know how to tell stories in a different and more challenging way. I've learned it doesn't get easier each time. It actually gets harder.

Mainly I love working on good writing.

A good script is like a work of art in itself. I've read hundreds of scripts, and good ones are very rare. If the writer has something to say, and a voice, and a plot that matches character, and an emotional trajectory that works, then I'd be an idiot to fool around with it. It's just that few scripts ever are like that.

Although I long to get away from the typewriter, if I think I can produce a better opening or a better closing to a chapter, I'll change and change round again until I'm satisfied.

I've grown more and more appreciative of good writing, and I now really hope I can become a better and better writer.

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

I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.