Screenwriter Quotes

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 English seem to think drinking wine is like committing adultery, something you do rarely and abroad.

William Nicholson

Well, one thing you can say for masturbation... you certainly don't have to look your best.

Our unconscious is not more animal than our conscious, it is often even more human

She would be a mentor and an inspiration to girls like herself, the quiet ones who'd sleepwalked their way through high school, knowing nothing except that they couldn't possibly be happy with any of the choices the world seemed to be offering them.

Love is the best, most insidious, most effective instrument of social repression.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

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.

One shouldn't allow oneself to be intimidated by something that can be picked up and tucked under one's arm.

Torture injures everyone who comes into contact with it and corrodes the country that abides it.

I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

There are no available men in their thirties in New York. Giuliani had them removed along with the homeless.

Michael Patrick King

Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.

Vsevolod Pudovkin

Nothing can last forever. There isn't any memory, no matter how intense, that doesn't fade out at last.

It's as though some poor devil were to set out for a large dinner party with the knowledge that the following morning he would be hearing exactly what each of the other guests thought of him.

Cornelia Otis Skinner

When a doting person gets down on all fours and plays with the dog's rubber mouse, it only confuses the puppy and gives him a sense of insecurity. He gets the impression that the world is unstable and wonders whether he is supposed to walk on his hind legs and smoke cigars.

Twenty miles on, we have spotted a roadside sign: 'CHAINSAW CARVED MUSHROOMS'. Troubles promptly forgotten, Stuart falls to gawping at the road ahead. What could it all be about? 'As one victim to another,' his body language seems to marvel, 'What's a mushroom done to deserve that kind of abuse?' Not even in the worst days of street-fighting did he ever experience ill-treatment on this scale.

Alexander Masters

I don't think plot as a plot means much today. I'd say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven't seen is characters and their relation to one another. I don't worry much about plot anymore.

Are you by any chance acquainted with the words 'steel toe'? Or do the words 'permanent dent' mean anything to you?" My locker door is not intimidated. "My grandfather was a vault at Fort Knox, and if you try to dent me with a kick you will only tear some ligament that will never mend.

I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and if you find that you're not, I hope you find the strength to start all over again.

I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime and by mid-afternoon you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause then it's wonderful. We're a strange bunch, we actors.

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

When I heard I was up for it, obviously I wanted to win. It's really an honour. I love playing for my country.

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

Flo: I've never been so insulted in my life.
Hackenbush: Well, it's early yet.

All men who first touch with words go much further afterwards with their hands.

Antonio Skarmeta