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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.