Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert Quotes
282 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
If there is such a thing as a lock on an Oscar nomination,... Hoffman has one.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
Families and their problems go on and on, and they aren't solved, they're dealt with.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
It's hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may - need is the word I use - to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
I'm told we movie critics praise movies that are long and boring.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
If you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear. Movies are hardly ever about what they seem to be about. Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may be.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
One of the most sublime and hazardous moments in human experience comes when two people lock eyes and realize that they are sexually attracted to one another. They may not act on the knowledge.They may file it away for future reference. They may deny it. They may never see each other again. But the moment has happened, and for an instant all other considerations are insignificant.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
I find that when I am actually writing, I enter a zone of concentration too small to admit my troubles.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
Yes, I was fat, but I dealt with it by simply never thinking about it. It is useful, when you are fat, to have a lot of other things to think about.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
A lot of first novels are written long before they're actually put down on paper.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
Fellini was more in love with breasts than Russ Meyer, more wracked with guilt than Ingmar Bergman, more of a flamboyant showman than Busby Berkeley... Amarcord seems almost to flow from the camera, as anecdotes will flow from one who has told them often and knows they work. This was the last of his films made for no better reason than Fellini wanted to make it.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
When I go to the movies, one of my strongest desires is to be shown something new. I want to go to new places, meet new people, have new experiences. When I see Hollywood formulas mindlessly repeated, a little something dies inside of me: I have lost two hours to boors who insist on telling me stories I have heard before.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
A young girl is possessed by a devil, and Constantine shouts, 'I need a mirror! Now! At least three feet high!' He can capture the demon in the mirror and throw it out the window, see, although you wonder why supernatural beings would have such low-tech security holes.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
Of Cate Blanchett:
That Blanchett could appear in the same Toronto Film Festival playing Elizabeth and Bob Dylan, both splendidly, is a wonder of acting.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
Show me a sexual practice that involves ice cubes and hot sauce, and I will show you a sexual practice that would be improved without them.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
It does seem true that a lot of people will do anything, however humiliating, for fame.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
While I am usually in despair when a movie abandons its plot for a third act given over entirely to action, I have no problem with the way Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ends, because it has been pointing toward this ending, hinting about it, preparing us for it, all the way through. What a glorious movie.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
I am, beneath everything else, a fan. I was fixed in this mode as a young boy and am awed by people who take the risks of performance.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
Teenagers used to go to the movies to see adults having sex. Today adults go to the movies to see teenagers having sex.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
People read the papers not in the hopes of learning something new, but in the expectation of being told what they already know. This is a form of living death. Its apotheosis is the daily poll in USA Today, which informs us what percentage of a small number of unscientifically selected people called a toll number to vote on questions that cannot possibly be responded to with a yes or no.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His editor cabled back: Forget flood. Interview God.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.
Roger Ebert
Source
Report...
What's sad about not eating is the experience, whether at a family reunion or at midnight by yourself in a greasy spoon under the L tracks. The loss of dining, not the loss of food.
Roger Ebert
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
...
12
Quote of the day
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine Like quiet night; Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine Through Peace to Light.
Adelaide Anne Procter
Roger Ebert
Creative Commons
Born:
June 18, 1942
Died:
April 4, 2013
(aged 70)
Bio:
Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic and historian, journalist, screenwriter and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013.
Known for:
Life Itself
At the Movies (1986 – 2010)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Ebert Presents: At the Movies (2011)
Sneak Previews (1975 – 1996)
Most used words:
movie
film
people
time
life
characters
bad
audience
find
love
story
kind
child
hated
feel
Roger Ebert on Wikipedia
Roger Ebert on Twitter
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Roger Ebert Quotes
Roger Ebert Short Quotes
American Journalist Quotes
Journalist Quotes
20th-century Journalist Quotes
Related People
Richard Roeper
American Critic
James Berardinelli
American Critic
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes