Screenwriter Quotes

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

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.

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.

Since ancient times, the philosophers' secret has always been this: we know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he's utterly indifferent to our individual affairs--but we can't let the rabble know that; it's the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own.

Robert J. Sawyer

When I woke up this morning, I found I'd turned into my mother.

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.

And the most dangerous place on earth— Is where you're safe.

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

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

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

We cannot improve the making of our eyes, but we can endlessly perfect the camera.

I write plays for people who wouldn't be seen dead in the theatre.

Obama took a bad situation and, in certain ways, made it worse.... I find Obama scary in a way that I had not done in 2008.

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.

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.

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

To Christopher Isherwood who had caught a bad cold and was saying apologetically that he should have cancelled their meeting:

My dear Christopher, any cold of yours is a cold of mine.

H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.

I have always hated crowds. I like deserts, prisons, and monasteries. I have discovered, too, that there are fewer idiots at 3000 meters above sea level than down below.

The 50s face was angry, the 60s face was well-fed, the 70s face was foxy. Perhaps it was the right expression: there was a lot to be wary about.

Keith Waterhouse

Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irreclaimable weakness of character.

Our mouths are full of such words as freedom, but what does it really mean? Does it not perhaps mean being totally alone, living in a total vacuum?

Krzysztof Kieślowski

The fish was an enemy. It had come upon the community and killed two men, a woman, and a child. The people of Amity would demand the death of the fish. They would need to see it dead before they could feel secure enough to resume their normal lives.

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

Michael Patrick King

Hawai'i has often been called a melting pot, but I think of it more as a 'mixed plate'—a scoop of rice with gravy, a scoop of macaroni salad, a piece of mahi-mahi, and a side of kimchi. Many different tastes share the plate, but none of them lose their individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely 'local' cuisine. This is also, I believe, what America is at its best—a whole greater than the sum of it's parts.

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