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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.

Robert McKee

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Robert McKee
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 30
Author
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Detroit
Michigan
Choose
Brilliantly
Told
Trivial
Choices
Versus
Audience
Badly
Given
Profound
Always
Material
Materials
Choice

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To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.
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To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.
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I cannot be a character in a bad movie. I can't be.
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There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.
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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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Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.
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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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What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.
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Stories build cultures by answering the big questions.
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We rarely know where we are going writing is a discovery.
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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.
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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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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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A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.
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Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
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Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
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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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Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality.
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In life two negatives don't make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse.
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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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