20th-century Screenwriter Quotes

Don't listen to the politicians, always look at the artists, they're the first to tell us where we're going.

Mark Mills (writer)

The future is now. It's time to grow up and be strong. Tomorrow may well be too late.

As time passes we all get better at blazing a trail through the thicket of advice.

Las Vegas is a city of kickbacks. A desert city of greased palms. A place where a $20 bill can buy approval, a $100 bill adulation and $1,000 canonization.

Nicholas Pileggi

In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet - that's why it's art.

Facts may be colored by the personalities of the people who present them.

Great parts of our economy are directly dependent upon women having a weak self-concept. A multi-billion dollar fashion-cosmetic industry testifies to the validity of this approach. A woman who does not know who she is can be sold anything.

Gabrielle Burton

Turned on the TV this morning. Had this shit on about living in a violent world. Showed all these foreign places foreigners live and all. I started thinking, man. Either they don't know, don't show, or don't care about what's going on in the 'hood.

In Tantrism, the first thing is having the experience of touch, of profound contact with things, with the universe, without mental commotion. Everything begins there: touching the universe deeply. When you touch deeply, you no longer need to let go. That occurs naturally.

I think for me anyway, the most successful horror movies that work are the ones that can create characters who you care about and that have characteristics that resonate with you and I think that is highly important, because if you can create characters that are likeable and people you can relate to, to me it makes the scares that much more scarier.

When I woke up this morning, I found I'd turned into my mother.

Just as a genetic mulatto is a black person of mixed parents who can often get along fine with his white grandparents, a cultural mulatto, educated by a multiracial mix of cultures, can also navigate easily in the white world.

There is art in taking time to appreciate the clean wash of the mind's silence.

Almost everyone working in mainstream comics started off as a starry-eyed kid reading and loving comics. We're all fans, and that's great. But when we start working on company-owned comics professionally, we have to think like storytellers instead of fans. Editors aren't looking to hire the biggest fans of the characters. They're looking to hire the best creators with the best ideas.

My inheritance. You stole my inheritance, man. That aint right. That aint right and you know it. You had yr own. And you blew it. You blew it motherfucker! I saved mines and you blew yrs.

Suzan-Lori Parks

Why can't you summon a command line and search your real-world home for 'Honda car keys,' and specify rooms in your house to search instead of folders or paths in your computer's home directory? It's a crippling design flaw in the real-world interface.

Richard Dooling

The legend of the jungle heritage and the evolution of man as a hunting carnivore has taken root in man's mind... He may even believe that equal pay will do something terrible to his gonads.

Elaine Morgan (writer)

Dating is a social brain teaser, as it requires constantly changing ratios of intimacy and distance, an erotic mental cha-cha choreographed by chemistry, insight, and fear.

Marilyn Suzanne Miller

Everybody is damaged goods. Everybody got bumps and dents, ja? But sometimes two people fit together, and the bumps go into the dents, and you have a whole thing like a potato.

Paul Quarrington

In every living soul, a spirit cries for expression—perhaps this plaintive, wailing song of Jazz is, after all, the misunderstood utterance of a prayer.

Samson Raphaelson

There'll be times when the only refuge is books. Then you'll read as if you meant it, as if your life depended on it.

Let's go again to Niag'ra,
This time we'll look at the Fall.
Let's leave our hut, Dear,
Get out of our rut, Dear,
Let's get away from it all.

The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.

I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food, which they take for granted - but his or her entertainment value.

Geoffrey Household

I will always defend the legitimacy of literary fiction in expounding historical truth.