Billy Bob Thornton Writing Quotations

Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.

People think you have to be tortured or miserable to write, but I'm finding that I get inspired a lot more these days before I'm happy.

I write songs on guitar and that's about how good of a guitar player I am. I can write songs on it.

Usually with film writing I start with characters, and set about writing their story.

My songs aren't built around choruses or hooks or anything like that. That's kind of how I write screenplays too.

I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.

Television is making, there was in independent film renaissance late '80s through the mid-90's. It was an amazing time. Television is doing that right now. So that's why everybody wants to do it. I mean if you're writing stuff like, you know, Fargo, or True Detective, or any of these things that are on, Breaking Bad, there are no rules in television.

If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps.

Usually when I'm writing, I kind of know what it is before I start writing and I write stream of consciousness style.

I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else.

I never wanted to write a book, and people have asked me for years to do it.