20th-century Screenwriter Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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

But do not look down on even the most minute of things; for with the coming of daybreak, even the tiniest particles of dust in this world sing and dance in the sunlight.

Today I live on an island, in a house that is sad, hard, severe, that I built for myself, solitary on a sheer rock over the sea: a house that is the spectre, the secret image of prison. The image of my nostalgia. Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in freedom, but to be free inside a prison.

Curzio Malaparte

Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and right place, they're capable of anything.

Just because you can't see them and you can't hear them, that doesn't mean they're not here.

Graham Masterton

There is no worse flaw in man's character than that of wanting to belong.

David Adams Richards

Everything that's worth having hurts in some way or other.

Even a man who's pure in heart
And says his prayers at night
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.

It is phenomenal how fast a little toot of smack will take away the agony of withdrawal and most other kinds of pain. What it cannot take away it makes meaningless. You may still have a broken arm, but somehow it doesn't matter so much. The same is true for angst and anxiety. It cancels pain so hidden that you were unaware of its existence until it disappeared.

When a man of forty falls in love with a girl of twenty, it isn't her youth he is seeking but his own.

You just threw cheese at Sam & Mark. Don't you think they've suffered enough?!

The Internet has come to resemble an enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor, and a continuous stream of new books being added helter-skelter to the piles.

Robert Roy Pool

Home was not the place where you were born but the place you created yourself, where you did not need to explain, where you finally became what you were.

People come to Washington believing it's the centre of power. I know I did. It was only much later that I learned that Washington is a steering wheel that's not connected to the engine.

Richard N. Goodwin

On the principles of Italian neo-realism:

I believe in imagination, but I have more faith in reality, in people. I am not interested in prearranged encounters, in the drama of things that happen to come together.

Cesare Zavattini

I really wanted to be a Jew, and then I found out that I was really a Nazi, because, you know, my family was German, which also gave me some pleasure. What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. But I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end. He's not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I'm not for the Second World War, and I'm not against Jews, no, not even Susanne Bier. I am of course very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass. But still, how can I get out of this sentence?

Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride,
Friendship without envy, or beauty without vanity?

Frankenstein, he makes a friend, he wants a wife... That's the one that I think cemented the creature as an icon, because all of the sudden you got to know the creature as a full-fledged person, and you felt sympathy for it, and not just, Oh, it's a monster.

Michael Dougherty

The key to a woman's heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.

The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations, Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations: Oh how the ghost of you clings! These foolish things Remind me of you.

The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.