166 Quotes by Robert McKee

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!

The material of literary talent is words; the material of story talent is life itself.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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