01UndatedWhat happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.Robert McKee / quote ↗
02UndatedWrite every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.Robert McKee / quote ↗
03UndatedIf the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.Robert McKee / quote ↗
04UndatedWhen talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience.Robert McKee / quote ↗
06UndatedNo civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.Robert McKee / quote ↗
08UndatedDo 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.Robert McKee / quote ↗
09UndatedPolitics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.Robert McKee / quote ↗
10UndatedNo 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 / quote ↗
11UndatedA 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 / quote ↗
12UndatedIn a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.Robert McKee / quote ↗
13UndatedTrue character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.Robert McKee / quote ↗
14UndatedGood 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 / quote ↗
15UndatedThe Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.Robert McKee / quote ↗
17UndatedScholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.Robert McKee / quote ↗
18UndatedWhereas 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 McKee / quote ↗
19UndatedBoredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.Robert McKee / quote ↗
20UndatedMost of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.Robert McKee / quote ↗
21UndatedDeus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.Robert McKee / quote ↗
22UndatedWhen we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.Robert McKee / quote ↗
23UndatedWe realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.Robert McKee / quote ↗
24UndatedGiven the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.Robert McKee / quote ↗
