American Screenwriter Quotes

We all lead more pedestrian lives than we think we do. The boiling of an egg is sometimes more important than the boiling of a love affair in the end.

Lillian Hellman

Critics have never been able to discover a unifying theme in my films. For thatmatter, neither have I.

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

You have watched the Titans walk the Earth … and you have kept stride. Perhaps you are more like them than you realize. You exist … to give hope.

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.

Being out on the edge, with everything at risk, is where you learn and grow the most.

We all romp about, grieving, wondering, but with rare exception we mostly remain suspended in the Rhetorical Colloidal Forever that agglutinates between Might and Do.

Pay minimum wage, you get minimum work. Nobody seems to get that.

I don't understand it completely … but she adores me. She thinks I'm funny. … My attitude towards communication has always been: it's a slippery slope, because you start communicating, the next thing you know you're going to be talking to each other, the next thing you know you're going to be feeling things, and then you'll be living your life and I want no part of that. … So I tried to avoid that stuff, but she forces it upon me.

William H. Macy

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.

Attention vermin, you are in the presence of a colossus.

I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted.

We all need the waters of the Mercy River. Though they don't run deep, there's usually enough, just enough, for the extravagance of our lives.

There are some men who possess a quality which goes way beyond romantic or even sexual appeal, a quality which literally enslaves. It has very little to do with looks and nothing at all to do with youth, because there are some quite mature and unathletic specimens who have it. It's an expression in the eyes, an aura of being in control, and responsible, or something easy and powerful in the stance, or who knows.

We all dream of being a child again, even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all.

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.

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Willis Goldbeck

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

I don't believe there is any finer mission on earth than just to make people laugh.

Roscoe Arbuckle

Memory was such a worthless thing, really. Nothing it dealt with was attainable. It was concerned with phantom acts and feelings, with all that was uncapturable except in thought. It was without satisfaction.

Richard Matheson

Howard Beale is processed, instant God, and right now it looks like he might just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.

Paddy Chayefsky

If you find a way to write with open heart to Diary, a friend with Truth, no detail spared, your tome like Petrarch's works will contain the scattered fragments of your soul.

Robin Maxwell (author)

A man who is not touched by the earthy lyricism of hot pastrami, the pungent fantasy of corned beef, pickles, frankfurters, the great lusty impertinence of good mustard is a man of stone and without heart.

Look, it's moving. It's alive, it's alive, it's alive. It's moving. It's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive!

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