Screenwriter Quotes

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

Roberto Rossellini

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.

Michael Cunningham

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

Heroes, while it was cancelled last year for low ratings on the network, ironically was the number one downloaded show in the world that year above shows like Lost and 24 and that kind of thing. For a show like Heroes that had all of these illegal downloading, pirating, I wore that as a badge of honour. That's exactly the kind of fan that you want! The kind that actively goes out and find your show.

A name with a gently exotic ring to it, like birdsong, like a grain of sand in the far-off Gobi Desert or the northern steppes, whipped up by the wind, carried by storms, swirling through the sky, travelling, crossing whole countries without knowing quite how, and ending up in the crook of my ear.

Those magnificent men in their flying machines, or How I flew from London to Paris in 25 hours and 11 minutes.

Jack Davies (screenwriter)

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

You're good, kid, but as long as I'm around, you're only second best.

Lancey Howard speaking

Ring Lardner Jr.

dear god, whose name i do not know. thank you for my life. i forgot... how BIG... thank you. thank you for my life.

John Patrick Shanley

People here always want to grab a simple camera and a table light, get their cousin and shoot a movie. You can't say that's wrong, but it's not cinema.

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

William Nicholson

I think for me anyway, the most successful horror movies that work are the ones that can create characters who you care about and that have characteristics that resonate with you and I think that is highly important, because if you can create characters that are likeable and people you can relate to, to me it makes the scares that much more scarier.

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.

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.

War is a farmer's son from Kansas trying to kill a factory worker's son from Berlin, with neither of them knowing why.

Randall Wallace

There was laughter in the back of the theatre, leading to the belief that someone was telling jokes back there.

George S. Kaufman

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.

Unlike the talent for war, the ability to make peace has always been rare.

Lawrence Wright

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

My inheritance. You stole my inheritance, man. That aint right. That aint right and you know it. You had yr own. And you blew it. You blew it motherfucker! I saved mines and you blew yrs.

Suzan-Lori Parks

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

Never apologize and never explain—it's a sign of weakness.

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.

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

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

Antonio Skarmeta