American Screenwriter Quotes

I think the greatest taboos in America are faith and failure.

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.

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

I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.

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

The director of a film is treated by his staff the way a group of passengers would treat a psychotic ship's captain during a typhoon: namely, with respect and apprehension.

Marshall Brickman

He had gone to several universities... and had found only curves and credits. He had become drunk on the idea of God and found only theology. He had risen several times on the subtle and powerful wings of lust, expectant of magnificence, achieving only discharge. A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind. His solitude now was the result of his metabolism, that constant breathing in of joy and exhalation of sadness.

Edward Lewis Wallant

Sometimes if something scares me, I lean right into it. I'm not a brave person— I'm more of a fearless idiot.

The emergency room was a madhouse. The stormy holiday roads had yielded more than the statistical expectation of traffic accidents.

Joe Gillis: You used to be in pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Charles Brackett

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

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

Did people ever stop changing? They surprised you with fresh pain. Sometimes they surprised you with happiness, but the pain was the sharper surprise. There was no way to protect yourself from it. People could always change and always hurt you. Of course it went in the other direction too, you could hurt them when you didn't intend it and that too was out of your control.

I've had this feeling ever since I graduated. This kind of compulsion that I have to be rude all the time.... It's like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules don't make any sense to me. They're being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up.

Calder Willingham

It's art. It's commerce. It's heartbreaking and it's fun. It's a great way to live.

It was one of those perfect New York October afternoons, when the explosion of oranges and yellows against the bright blue sky makes you feel like your life is passing through your fingers, that you've felt this autumn-feeling before and you'll probably get to feel it again, but one day you won't anymore, because you'll be dead.

Sarah Dunn (author)

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

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

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

I burned my candle at both ends, And now have neither foes nor friends.

Samuel Hoffenstein

Indecisiveness and procrastination are the chosen ways of life for most people. They follow the course of least resistance, which is to do nothing. This provides a security blanket of never being wrong, never making mistakes, never being disappointed and never failing. But they will also never succeed.

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

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.

The superstitions of today are the scientific facts of tomorrow.

John L. Balderston

It's not the child's responsibility to teach the parent who they are. It's the parent's responsibility to learn who the child is.