20th-century Screenwriter Quotes

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.

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

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

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

Our mouths are full of such words as freedom, but what does it really mean? Does it not perhaps mean being totally alone, living in a total vacuum?

Krzysztof Kieślowski

Pirate: I'm gonna teach you the meaning of pain.
Elizabeth: You like pain? Try wearing a corset.

If not exactly raging against the dying of the light, I was at least a little cross with it.

If you think you have a good idea, get into the marketplace as quickly as you can, using as little money as possible, and see what happens.

There is no better xsample of a goody-goody than fotherington-tomas in the world in space. You kno he is the one who sa Hullo Clouds Hullo Sky and skip about like a girly.

Geoffrey Willans

Now, your Honor; in much the same way that there are laws governing our society, there are also laws governing chance, and these are called the laws of probability, and it is against these that we must examine the use of an identical division number.

Desire is always followed by boredom. And only love can defeat boredom. Love with a capital L; we all dream of it.

Grégoire Delacourt

Claire: How do you know you're…God?
Earl Of Gurney: Simple. When I pray to Him I find I'm talking to myself.

I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime and by mid-afternoon you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause then it's wonderful. We're a strange bunch, we actors.

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

Recommendation for a successful tabloid story: Add sex, and stir.

It's sad when our daddies die. Makes us one less person inside.

The function of camera movement is to assist the storytelling. That's all it is. It cannot be there just to demonstrate itself.

She is a phenomenon of nature, like Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon. You can't talk to it. It can't talk to you. All you can do is stand back and be awed by it.

Of Marilyn Monroe

Nunnally Johnson

The heart that is to be filled to the brim with holy joy must be held still.

That's our plan? We're going to walk fifty kilometers, right past the Germans, to a poultry collective that maybe didn't get burned down, grab a dozen eggs, and come home?" "Well, anything would sound ridiculous if said it in that tone of voice." "Tone of....I'm asking you a question!

One shouldn't allow oneself to be intimidated by something that can be picked up and tucked under one's arm.

I knew the past wasn't real. It was only an idea, and the thing I'd wanted to touch, to brush against, the feeling I couldn't name - it just didn't exist. It was only an idea, too.

I'll think of you after I'm dead if I can.

We grabbed their hands and dragged them home. Ah, I hope they've forgiven me.

Lionel Jeffries

In a profession where simple accountancy is preferable to a degree in English, illiteracy is not considered to be a great drawback.