All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.
Robert MckeeRead
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Stories transform life experiences into impactful narratives that connect people.
In this quote, Robert Mckee emphasizes the transformative power of storytelling, suggesting that stories serve not only as reflections of our lives but also as vehicles for deeper understanding and connection among people. He asserts that through storytelling, we can convey complex human experiences in a way that resonates and creates a shared sense of meaning.
Themes
StoriesLifeConnectionExperienceHuman Contact
In practice
Example use cases
In a public speaking event to illustrate the power of storytelling in connecting diverse audiences.
More from Robert Mckee
All quotes →Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.
Robert MckeeRead
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 MckeeRead
Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
Robert MckeeRead
We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.
Robert MckeeRead
Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality.
Robert MckeeRead
Similar quotes
To the question, ‘Is the cinema an art?’ my answer is, ‘what does it matter?’... You can make films or you can cultivate a garden. Both have as much claim to being called an art as a poem by Verlaine or a painting by Delacroix… Art is ‘making.’ The art of poetry is the art of making poetry. The art of love is the art of making love... My father never talked to me about art. He could not bear the word.
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Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in the artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?
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I was drawing a mandolin, and I made the sound hole very small, which made the mandolin look gigantic. I saw that making the details small made the form monumental. So in my figures, the eyes, the mouth are all small, and the exterior form is huge.
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Art is purposiveness without purpose.
Immanuel KantRead
The most important thing is you can't write what you wouldn't read for pleasure. It's a mistake to analyze the market thinking you can write whatever is hot. You can't say you're going to write romance when you don't even like it. You need to write what you would read if you expect anybody else to read it.
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As far as I was concerned, it was the absence of women in the poetic tradition which allowed women in the poems to be simplified. The voice of a woman poet would, I was sure, have precluded such distortion. It did not exist.
Eavan BolandRead