A Quote by Nora Ephron

A lot of college graduates approach me about becoming screenwriters. I tell them, 'Do not become a screenwriter, become a journalist,' because journalists go into worlds that are not their own. Kids who go to Hollywood write coming-of-age stories for their first scripts, about what happened to them when they were sixteen. Then they write the summer camp script. At the age of twenty-three they haven't produced anything, and that's the end of the career.

Nora Ephron

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About Age Anything Approach Because Become Becoming Camp Career College College Graduates Coming End First Go Graduates Happened Hollywood Journalist Journalists Kids Lot Me Own Produced Screenwriter Screenwriters Script Scripts Sixteen Stories Summer Summer Camp Tell Them Then Three Twenty Were Worlds Write

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Nora Ephron
American - Author
May 19, 1941 - June 26, 2012

I wrote lots of scripts that never got made and they were terrible. I thought they were good at the time. You can't write two scripts and expect your career to take off. Keep writing. Be you. Be original. A lot of people go for a genre, which is fine if you can do that really well, but we all have such layered histories. We all come from a unique background. Write about your past, write about you. Or make stuff up, but make it about something that really matters.

Nicole Holofcener

When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry.

Grace Paley

I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates.

Geoffrey Canada

As a player, I can tell them they don't want to rush to become a coach, because there is a lot that goes on. This is all something new to me. You can talk to a lot of the coaches... and they can tell you. Until you go through it, then you can understand what it's all about.

Jason Kidd

Too few journalists become screenwriters. I say to all the would-be screenwriters: Become journalists. And I’ll say to working journalists: Do not stay journalists. Become screenwriters.

Nora Ephron

One of the things when you write, well the way I write, is that you are writing your scenario and there are different roads that become available that the characters could go down. Screenwriters will have a habit of putting road blocks up against some of those roads because basically they can't afford to have their characters go down there because they think they are writing a movie or trying to sell a script or something like that. I have never put that kind of imposition on my characters. Wherever they go I follow.

Quentin Tarantino

A lot of black actors will sit there and go, 'Every role is about being a gangster' - then they get an opportunity to write a script and they write about a gangster. You know... write about a superhero.

Ashley Walters

The age of the book is not over. No way... But maybe the age of some books is over. People say to me sometimes 'Steve, are you ever going to write a straight novel, a serious novel' and by that they mean a novel about college professors who are having impotence problems or something like that. And I have to say those things just don't interest me. Why? I don't know. But it took me about twenty years to get over that question, and not be kind of ashamed about what I do, of the books I write.

Stephen King

I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would tell them they might as well go write about killing puppies because neither story was going to work. It just doesn't work.

Kurt Vonnegut

I'm always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something.

Jamaica Kincaid

My goal for children's books is to have them become tableside or bedside classics. To me, it would be awesome to write a book that every kid would end up reading at some point in their life because influencing kids in a positive way at such a young age is really cool.

Coy Bowles

Someone wanted me to write a profile for ESPN about the commissioner of baseball, and I said, "He's just some suit! Some Republican. No!" I mean if you want me to write about baseball, boxing or football, I'll write about those things because I watch them, I think about them a lot and I like them. But I don't want to write about Barry Bonds.

Richard Ford

I don't have a life, really. I take my kids to school, and I go home, and I write. Then I go pick my kids up, make them dinner, put them to bed, and write some more.

Derek Cianfrance

The reason I quit being a sales manager over twenty years now is because I hate elevator pitches. I want to write stories and show people what's in them when they read them, not tell them all about it ahead of time.

Kurt Busiek

I thought I was a pretty good writer, but I didn't have anything to write about. I wanted to go out in the world, have some adventures and then write about them.

Shane Smith

It's terrifying to think about all things that were awful for you. But for me, sharing all of them was so satisfying, because people read them and get to go, "Oh, okay, I don't have to feel so shitty about that," or maybe even, "Why was I feeling so shitty about that? I should own that and learn from that." Those are the sorts of stories I want to tell.

Kelly Oxford

A Quote by Nora Ephron

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