Strong Writing Quotes

Sometimes the writing can be so good that the actor doesn't really have to do anything.

Be brief, be pointed, let your matter standLucid in order, solid and at hand;Spend not your words on trifles but condense;Strike with the mass of thought, not drops of sense;Press to close with vigor, once begun,And leave, (how hard the task!) leave off, when done.

Never use the word, 'very.' It is the weakest word in the English language; doesn't mean anything. If you feel the urge of 'very' coming on, just write the word, 'damn,' in the place of 'very.' The editor will strike out the word, 'damn,' and you will have a good sentence.

Vigorous writing is concise.

That's why, when Alias came along, I knew I'd be OK if the show was on for five or six years because the writing was so good and the creative team was so strong.

No good writer ever merely cheered us up. But there's an unblinking stare into the darkness of things we have to go elsewhere to find. Jane Austen was made of strong stuff. She was too satiric for D. H. Lawrence's taste and too unforgiving for Kingsley Amis's, but you would still not call her hellish.

Steve Yarbrough is a masterful storyteller-one of our finest-and Safe from the Neighbors is a masterpiece. . . . This is a spellbinding, powerful novel.

Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen.

You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.

One of the things that I learned in television, and one of the beauties of television, is that, if you have a strong writing staff, they rely on you just as much as you rely on them. They look to me or the other actors to help inspire them to take the character in interesting directions.

No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer.

Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it.

Mark Twain said, 'The right word is to the nearly right word as lightning is to the lightning bug.' Fill your book with lightning.

You have to look at the value of different kinds of words. Adjectives weaken, and adverbs come even farther down the line. Verbs are strong; verbs and nouns.

I think the thing that interests most actors these days is the strength and the quality of the writing. I think that's the main thing.

With great writing, there is great clarity.

I read the 'Kapoor & Sons' script in a half hour, forty five minutes. Not because I skimming through it... I read it like a book. By the end, I was blown away. I picked up the phone and said, 'This script is gold.'