Quote

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

Robert McKee

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Robert McKee

Image
Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
Robert McKee
Image
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.
Robert McKee
Image
Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.
Robert McKee
Image
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
Image
Stories are the currency of human relationships.
Robert McKee
Image
Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work.
Robert McKee
Image
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.
Robert McKee
Image
Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality.
Robert McKee
Image
No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.
Robert McKee
Image
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.
Robert McKee
Image
To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.
Robert McKee
Image
When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.
Robert McKee
Image
Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.
Robert McKee
Image
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!
Robert McKee
Image
We rarely know where we are going writing is a discovery.
Robert McKee
Image
In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.
Robert McKee
Image
Stories build cultures by answering the big questions.
Robert McKee
Image
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.
Robert McKee
Image
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.
Robert McKee
Image
To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.
Robert McKee