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Talent without craft is like fuel without an engine, it burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.

Robert McKee

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Robert McKee
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 30
Author
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Detroit
Michigan
Like
Engines
Craft
Crafts
Fuel
Accomplish
Accomplishes
Talent
Wildly
Without
Burns
Nothing
Engine

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Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.
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When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.
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What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.
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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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To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.
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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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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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Stories are the currency of human relationships.
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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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There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.
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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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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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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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Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
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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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Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality.
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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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To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.
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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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