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No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.

Robert McKee

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Robert McKee
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 30
Author
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Detroit
Michigan
Midnight
Souls
Percent
Talent
Less
Best
Soul
Matter

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Talent without craft is like fuel without an engine, it burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.
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Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
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To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.
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Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work.
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In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.
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A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.
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Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.
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There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.
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To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.
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Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.
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Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality.
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Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.
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Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.
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Of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.
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I cannot be a character in a bad movie. I can't be.
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When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit!
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Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.
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We rarely know where we are going writing is a discovery.
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Stories are the currency of human relationships.
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What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.
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