Screenwriter Quotes

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

Antonio Skarmeta

Responsibility without power, the fate of the secretary through the ages.

The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations, Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations: Oh how the ghost of you clings! These foolish things Remind me of you.

It is phenomenal how fast a little toot of smack will take away the agony of withdrawal and most other kinds of pain. What it cannot take away it makes meaningless. You may still have a broken arm, but somehow it doesn't matter so much. The same is true for angst and anxiety. It cancels pain so hidden that you were unaware of its existence until it disappeared.

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 burned my candle at both ends, And now have neither foes nor friends.

Samuel Hoffenstein

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.

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

Tell Papa I admire him but from now on I plan to admire him from as far away as I can get.

As long as the protagonist wants something, the audience will want something.

I owe my greatest success to women. Contrary to the assertion that women do all in their power to hinder one another's progress, I have found that it has always been one of my own sex who has given me a helping hand when I needed it.

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

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Turned on the TV this morning. Had this shit on about living in a violent world. Showed all these foreign places foreigners live and all. I started thinking, man. Either they don't know, don't show, or don't care about what's going on in the 'hood.

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.

Charles Eastman

Dating is a social brain teaser, as it requires constantly changing ratios of intimacy and distance, an erotic mental cha-cha choreographed by chemistry, insight, and fear.

Marilyn Suzanne Miller

They call war an art, but it isn't. It largely consists in outwitting people, robbing widows and orphans, and inflicting suffering on the helpless for one's own ends - and that's not art: that's business.

Kenneth Roberts (author)

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

There is nothing like tasting the grit of fear for rediscovering that the umbilical cord is made of piano wire.

I feel that the act of writing, in and of itself, is a tool towards probing that which you wouldn't without that pen in your hand. It's a strange, almost neurological phenomenon, and the words seem to generate more words - but only when you're writing. You can't do it in your head.

Sometimes you just gotta trust that your secret's been kept long enough.

I guess I think that films have to be made totally by fascists – there's no room for democracy in making film.

D. A. Pennebaker

Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.

Everything we did was a first: first bath, first walk, first drive in the car. It was like we walked into an alternate universe that looked just like the old one, but all the rules were different and we had to relearn how to live.

Soleil Moon Frye

Recommendation for a successful tabloid story: Add sex, and stir.

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

Lancey Howard speaking

Ring Lardner Jr.