Screenwriter Quotes

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

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.

What a people talk about means something. What they don't talk about means something.

William Saroyan

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

Because answers are inert things that stop inquiry. They make you think you have finished looking. But you are never finished. There are always discoveries that will turn everything you think you know on its head and that will make you ask all over again: Who are we?

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.

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 am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.

Roberto Rossellini

In every living soul, a spirit cries for expression—perhaps this plaintive, wailing song of Jazz is, after all, the misunderstood utterance of a prayer.

Samson Raphaelson

No exercise brings into play all the muscles of the body in a more thorough manner, and none is more interesting than wrestling. He will find no other exercise more valuable in the cultivation of faculties which will help him to success in agility, strength, determination, coolness, and quick exercise of judgement.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

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.

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

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

The key to a woman's heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.

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.

His mane was like a crest, mounting, then falling low. His neck was long and slender, and arched to the small, savagely beautiful head. The head was that of the wildest of all wild creatures- a stallion born wild- and it was beautiful, savage, splendid. A stallion with a wonderful physical perfection that matched his savage, ruthless spirit.

I like the idea of stopping mid-sentence, like Graham Greene.

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

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

Just as a genetic mulatto is a black person of mixed parents who can often get along fine with his white grandparents, a cultural mulatto, educated by a multiracial mix of cultures, can also navigate easily in the white world.

There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.

His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.

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

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