Best 62 quotes of Robert Mckee on MyQuotes

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.

Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.

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

Aristotle said time is a measure of change, and this movie is about changing in time, through time, while remaining the same person. That's a philosophical paradox and a moral dilemma. But 'Casablanca' says it's possible. You can have both. That's what it means. And that's my wish for you: that you would have both.

Classical design is a mirror of the human mind. It's how we see the world.

Deus 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.

Don't be didactic - don't write about poverty. Write about poor people. When you dramatize their lives and let life and characters be your inspiration, you will express the 'idea' dynamically and without preaching.

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.

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.

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.

I cannot be a character in a bad movie. I can't be.

If you can't play all the instruments in the orchestra of story, no matter what music may be in your imagination, you're condemned to hum the same old tune.

In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.

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.

It seems to me that the civilized human being is a skeptic someone who believes nothing at face value.

Life is chaotic and meaningless, and you have to find your meaning. You must find the answer, you can't just live. That's the point of story: helping you find your meaning in life.

Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.

Never sleep with anybody who has more problems than you do.

Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I've stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate--the ritual often exhausts them.

Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work.

No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

Of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.

Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75 percent or more of a writer's labor goes into designing the story designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart.  Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought.

Oh, by the way, I tend to use a lot of profanities. I do that for a reason: I like it.

Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.

Stories are the currency of human relationships.

Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

Stories build cultures by answering the big questions.

Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas.

Story is about originality, not duplication

Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.

Story is morally neutral. It can express profound truth or propaganda. The two greatest political storytellers of the 20th Century were Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler. Because storytelling is a form of persuasive jujitsu, and because world is full of black belt storytellers, the corporate leader has to train both his offensive and defensive moves

Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality.

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

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

The Business story is designed to trigger the listener to take an effective action. If it doesn't, the story fails.

The dirty secret of art is you don't have to show people your bad writing. That's what we have the delete key for.

The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.

The mark of a master is to select only a few moments, but give us a lifetime.

The principle of Creative Limitations calls for freedom within a circle of obstacles and restricted boundaries. Talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies. So we deliberately put obstacles in our path - barriers that will inspire us. We disciple ourselves as to what to do, while we're boundless as to how to do it.

There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.

The students realize that it's their life I'm talking about: it's out of balance, they're struggling to put it into balance. How are they going to do it?

The universal erosion of values has lead to the universal erosion of story.

To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.

To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.

We often put off doing something for as long as possible, then as we finally make the decision and step into the action, we're surprised by its relative ease. We're left to wonder why we dreaded it until we realize that most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.

We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.