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Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

Robert McKee

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Robert McKee
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 30
Author
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Detroit
Michigan
Obey
Artist
Form
Anxious
Master
Artists
Rules
Writers
Inexperienced
Masters
Rebellious
Break

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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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Talent without craft is like fuel without an engine, it burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.
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We rarely know where we are going writing is a discovery.
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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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Stories build cultures by answering the big questions.
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Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.
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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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Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
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I cannot be a character in a bad movie. I can't be.
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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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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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There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.
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Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work.
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To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.
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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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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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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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To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.
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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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No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.
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