American Screenwriter Quotes

Look, Daddy. Teacher says, "Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings."

Frances Goodrich

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

Always know and remember that you are more than your physical body.

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

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

Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus, and it's hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy, and more than anything else in the world, you wanna get off. And the only reason in the world you don't get off is it's still fifty blocks from where you're going. Well, I can get off right now if I want to. Because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it's still the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. Whenever I've had enough, it's my stop. I've had enough.

I've been obsessed with this kind of visual storytelling for quite a while, and I try to create material that allows me to explore it.

There are no enemies in science, professor. Only phenomena to study.

Charles Lederer

Nobody comes to Minnesota to take their clothes off, at least as far as I know.

Photography is to the layman perhaps the most enticing art. As a buff and a follower, at a respectful distance, I find myself like others, having the heart of a Steiglitz with hands that sometimes seem impeded by boxing gloves. What is exasperating is that one can feel closer to managing the skills of photography than most other arts, and yet be a long hop, skip and delusional way from it.

The Cross was the manifestation of Divine love without reserve or limit; but it was also the expression of man's unutterable malignity.

Robert Anderson

The superstitions of today are the scientific facts of tomorrow.

John L. Balderston

There can only be one winner, folks, but isn't that the American way?

Yeah, a memory's never finished, if you really think about it.

Richard Linklater

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

Willis Goldbeck

In no particular order, I could not or would not exist without air, food, water, gravity, tides, the moon, the sun, night, civilization, the laws of physics, the laws of thermodynamics, the law of the land, ancestors having sex, DNA, viruses, bacteria, plants, animals, oceans, ice caps, the kindness of strangers, the Big Bang, familial bonds, smart people, brave people, memory, medicine, the periodic table of elements, tribal instincts, magnetic fields, weather, Earth's molten core, a rotating Earth, a tilted Earth, tectonic plates, sleep, death, heat, consciousness, evolution, teachers and the miraculous, self-regulating chemical factory that is my body. Other than that, I like to think of myself as a self-made man.

Sick in my soul I tried to face the ordeal of seeking forgiveness. From whom? What God, what Christ? They were myths I once believed and now they were beliefs I felt were myths.

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

Bernie: Can you help me? I have lost my sense of direction.
Kermit: Have you tried Hare Krishna?

A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb — if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.

Nothing looks more foolish than tradition to those who have none.

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.

I've always been more afraid of being left alone or left out than of things that go bump in the night.

And Kate Hepburn-God, she's beautiful, God, she plays golf well, God, she can get anyone in the world on the phone, God, she knows what to do all the time, God, she wears clothes well.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

You've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?