Amy Sherman-Palladino Writing Quotations

Writing is a sad process, sitting on your ass for many, many hours, alone in a room, smelling like coffee, sadness and bitterness, and watching your youth leave.

As a writer, all you want to do is write for great actors. That's all.

When you write for a show that's not yours, your job is to hear the voices of the characters and write as best you can for those voices.

This business [moviemaking] isn't easy. It's a hard business. You just keep plugging away until you figure it out. You write something you love and keep banging on people's heads until somebody lets you do it.

With directing, you have to wake up early, which stinks, but you get to hang out with the crew, you're laughing, you're active, and you're working with the actors. It's just more fun than writing. Writing is very hard.

I would recommend that any writer get off their ass at least once and just try it. Directing is a completely different set of muscles. It also affects your writing because, once you start directing, you tend to write your scripts with directing in mind.

It helps, if you've directed, to be able to write a script that is director-friendly. You're really telling them [directors], "This is how it works on this show." It takes some of the guesswork out of it.