Dialogue Quotes

“Dialogue concentrates meaning; conversation dilutes it.”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“Creativity isn't learning the right answers but asking the strongest questions.”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“Language composed into dialogue offers a spectrum that runs from mental meanings at one end to sensual experiences at the other. For example, a character might call a singer's voice either "lousy" or "sour." Both terms make sense, but "lousy" is a dead metaphor that once meant "covered with lice." "Sour" still has life. The moment the audience hears "sour," their lips start to pucker. Which line stirs the most inner feeling: "She walks like a model" or "She moves like a slow, hot song"? Dialogue can express the same idea in countless ways, but in general, the more sensory the trope, the deeper and more memorable its effect.”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“HOW ENGLISH BECAME A DOUBLE LANGUAGE After the Romans conquered England in the first century AD, they hired German and Scandinavian mercenaries from Anglia and Saxony to help fend off pirates and put down rebellions by the native Picts and Celts. When the Roman Empire abandoned England in 410 AD, more Anglo-Saxons migrated to the island, marginalizing the Gallic-speaking Celts, wiping out the Latin of the Romans, and imposing their Germanic tongue throughout England. But 600 years later Latin came back this roundabout way: In 911 AD Danish Vikings conquered territory along the north coast of France and named it after themselves, Normandy, land of the Norsemen. After 150 years of marriage to French women, these Danes spoke what their mothers spoke, a thousand-year-old French dialect of Latin. In 1066 King Wilhelm of Normandy (a.k.a. William the Conqueror) led his armies across the English Channel and defeated the English king. With that victory, French came to England. Throughout history, foreign conquests usually erase native languages. But England was the exception. For some mysterious reason, the Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons and the Latinate French of the Normans merged. As a result, the vocabulary of what became modern English doubled. English has at least two words for everything. Compare, for example, the Germanic-rooted words “fire,” “hand,” “tip,” “ham,” and “flow” to the French-derived words “flame,” “palm,” “point,” “pork,” and “fluid.”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“The difference is this: You’re lonely when you have something to share but no one to share it with. You’re lost when you have nothing to share, no matter with whom you live. Of course, you can be both lonely and lost, but of the two, lost inflicts the greater pain.”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“Quality storytelling inspires quality dialogue.”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“دیالوگ با هر آهنگ متفاوتی که زندگی تصنیف سازد می تواند به رقص درآید”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“درام زندگی بداهه پردازی بی پایانی است”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“Creativity is choice-making.”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“What’s worse, telling erases subtext.”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.”6”
― Robert McKee, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen