Quotes by American Authors - Page 259

Then the movie started. It was in a foreign language and had subtitles, which was fun because I had never read a movie before.
Stephen Chbosky
Why don't you wear those tiny shorts when you run, like they do in the movies?" His voice was low and sexy, and he knew it."Because I'm not in a movie. I know it's confusing, since you obviously live 'The Saxon Show' day and night, but some of us want to live a boring, old, normal high school life, you know?
Liz Reinhardt
Like most people raised on American movies, I have poor access to my emotions, but can banter like a motherfucker.
Josh Bazell
Everyone gets killed in the shower. Don't you go to the movies? Psycho. Dead in shower. The MExican in No country for Old Men. Dead in shower. Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath. Almost dead in shower, or in the bath, anyway. But she did that thing with her toe and got out OD. Still the shower, though...Glen Close in Fatal Attraction. Dead in shower. John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Very dead in shower. But never closets. I can't think of anyone shot in a closet. This is why I hide in closets.
Derek B. Miller
Don't you go to the movies?""Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark.
Charles Bukowski
Am I a romantic? I've seen "Wuthering Heights" ten times. I'm a romantic.
Johnny Depp
Rather than attack the Christian faith directly, many films undermine foundational Christian principles, including the human need for salvation. These films present a false "gospel" that leads people away from the truth. Recognizing these messages in movies can help us avoid being adversely influenced by them. Just as importantly, the messages in these stories can provide us with starting points for sharing the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
Douglas Beaumont
If Wolf Blitzer goes through his entire career on air without crying, I think that'll be the time to greenlight the remake of 'Never Cry Wolf.
Gregor Collins
When Rip Torn dies - heaven forbid - but when he dies, you'll only have to write RIP Torn.
Gregor Collins
The Runaway Five's obvious influence is The Blues Brothers. During localization, their black and white suits were made more colorful to avoid legal action from Universal Pictures or the film's producers. When I told my wife Aviva about this, she admitted she had never seen The Blues Brothers film. Having grown up on a steady diet of Saturday Night Live-spawned movies, I told her that her innocence here was blasphemous. That night, we marveled together at James Brown's hair.
Ken Baumann
It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.
Roger Ebert
In the movies you get even; in life, diplomacy is best.
Lee Marvin
Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.
David Fincher
I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said that 90% of successful movie making is in the casting. The same is true in life. Who you are exposed to, who you choose to surround yourself with is a unique variable in all of our experience, and it is hugely important in making us who we are.
Rob Lowe
The comic book is not the book. the graphic novel is not the novel. The same, of course, is true of films and television. When we move a story from one medium to another, no matter how faithful we attempt to be, some changes are inevitable. Each medium has its own demands, own restrictions, its own way of telling a story.
George R.R. Martin
A stage adaptation of The Giver has been performed in cities and towns across the USA for years. More recently an opera has been composed and performed. And soon there will be a film. Does The Giver have the same effect when it is presented in a different way: It's hard to know. A book, to me is almost sacrosanct: such an individual and private thing. The reader brings his or her own history and beliefs and concerns, and reads in solitude, creating each scene from his own imagination as he does. There is no fellow ticket-holder in the next seat. The important thing is that another medium--stage, film, music--doesn't obliterate a book. The movie is here now, on a big screen, with stars and costumes and a score. But the book hasn't gone away. It has simply grown up, grown larger, and begun to glisten in a new way.
Lois Lowry
Just then, just when I thought I would be free from the repeated blows to my tender head of the Stupidity Hammer, the Stupidity Hammer rose up from the shining screen, drew back, whirled hugely, and with great force and might and main slammed me right between the eyes so my brain squirted out my ears a yard past my shoulders in both directions. tBilbo does not seal the barrels. tI will wait for you to recover in case you just got the sensation of a Stupidity Hammer clonking you from the page. Then I will repeat myself, because it is so dumb you might not believe me: tBilbo does not seal the barrels. He leaves the tops open. -- The Desolation of Tolkien
John C. Wright
Why wait for the movie tomorrow, when you can read the book today!
Carmela Dutra
And therefore a giant hammer of pure stupidity lashed out of the screen and felled me again. I lay mewling, clutching my head with my sweaty hands, whimpering for my Mommy to make it stop. MAKE IT STOP! tBut it did not stop. It. Did. Not. Stop. -- The Desolation of Tolkien
John C. Wright
All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves. tEquality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks. tBattles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create. tSo, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry? -- The Desolation of Tolkien
John C. Wright
Why torture yourself when life will do it for you?
Frank Mugavero
Oh, right. She doesn’t know your secret identity.” Andy unzipped his sweatshirt and tossed it on a chair. “So, Meg Ryan just sent Tom Hanks a book but…”t“No, Meg Ryan just sent NY152 a book, which was then overnighted to Tom Hanks, who lives above Meg Ryan and knows she’s Shopgirl, while she has no idea he’s NY152.”t“I’m a little disturbed you know that movie so well.”t“It was actually a remake of a 1937 play called Parfumerie by Miklós László.” Paul blew out a breath. “And it’s really not as fun as they made it sound.”t“But hey, at least you can say you’ve got mail,” Andy said, chuckling.
Mary Jane Hathaway
We love films because they make us feel something. They speak to our desires, which are never small. They allow us to escape and to dream and to gaze into eyes that are impossibly beautiful and huge. They fill us with longing. But also. They tell us to remember; they remind us of life. Remember, they say, how much it hurts to have your heart broken. Remember about death and suffering and the complexities of living. Remember what it is like to love someone. Remember how it is to be loved. Remember what you feel in this moment. Remember this. Remember this.
Nina LaCour
I can't work in a sewer. I come from California.
Orson Welles
Begin each day as if it were on purpose.
Kevin Bisch
According to Joss [Whedon], “TV is a question, movies are an answer.
Amy Pascale
I will tell you in another life when we are both cats.
Cameron Crowe
Little by little, the look of the land changes by the men we admire.
Larry McMurtry
Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place.
John Hughes
In-laws were often used as plot devices to drive a happy couple apart, to destroy marital love and trust.
Jeanine Basinger
Anytime I button my coat, I'm packed.
George 'Gabby' Hayes
When you use more than 3-5% of your brain, you don't want to be on Earth!"-Bob Diamond, Interdimensional Attorney, from the Albert Brooks' movie, Defending Your Life
Albert Brooks
Moving provides meaning for our humble (if still vicious) life of four-dimensional existence. Four-dimensional existence makes the frightening fox hunt into an entertainment, or war into a pastime or a sport. Even when evil is dull and monotonous, there tends to be a lot of movement, action and entertainment involved. Maybe movies are evil.
Gus Van Sant
We told each other what movies we were currently watching and what books we were reading.
Ernest Cline
Today I found an old friend. –Ed Burns via Purple Violets
Edward Burns
Today I found an old friend.
Ed Burns
Movies endorsed unwanted ideas by putting them into story form and resolving them up there on the screen. The goal was, as always, identification, but also relief.
Jeanine Basinger
The true marriage movie involving in-laws and children is a story about how marriage is directly affected by external characters who impact the central relationship in various ways.
Jeanine Basinger
The ghastly mother-in-law is well represented by a little comedy film of 1952: No Room for the Groom, directed by Douglas Sirk, the fine German director more famous for his melodramas that humanely criticize American morals and values.
Jeanine Basinger
The story of a marriage was an excellent way to fulfill the goal of discussing class without discussing class, and to tell an audience that they were upwardly mobile.
Jeanine Basinger
... this film taps perfectly into the viewers’ sense of the world. It was a big, big hit, and one of Hollywood’s best-remembered marriage movies, although by grounding itself in trendy political issues, it avoids ordinary day-to-day marital problems. Its bottom line is, however, marry your own kind.
Jeanine Basinger
Out of perverseness, I jumped on the subway and went down to a sound stage on Fourth Street to watch the shooting of Kay Doubleday's big strip scene in Mad Dog Coll, a gangster film that can still, to my embarrassment, be seen occasionally on late-night TV... Kay Doubleday was in my class at Lee Strasberg's; it was in the interest of art, I told myself, to watch her prance down a ramp, singing and stripping her heart out.
Brooke Hayward
When it came to portraying couples who never directly connected, the Newmans were the Olympic gold champions
Jeanine Basinger
Excellent films do exist on the subject, however, and one is a pure marriage movie in which Newman and Woodward make it work. Mr. and Mrs. Bridge exists to tell moviegoers that the marriage of their parents—especially if they were those tragic dogsbodies, Midwesterners—were fogbound. The film depicts a steady relationship that has no real communication between its couple
Jeanine Basinger
Another superb movie about a mature marriage grounded in a fundamental lack of communication is Dodsworth, based on the Sinclair Lewis novel.
Jeanine Basinger
Joanne Woodward’s Mrs. Bridge is one of the best performances ever given on film of a middle-aged woman.
Jeanine Basinger
Movies with interfering in-laws and kids are often presented as comic, the ridicule bringing welcome relief to beleaguered married folks suffering offscreen at the hands of relatives.
Jeanine Basinger
A new adaptation of Jane Eyre came out every year, and every year it was exactly the same. An unknown actress would play Jane, and she was usually prettier than she should have been. A very handsome, very brooding, very 'ooh-la-la' man would play Rochester, and Judi Dench would play everyone else.
Catherine Lowell
But a movie doesn't have to be good if it has Hugh Jackman.
Jesse Andrews
We look at other people's lives, & we see what looks like a beautiful, adventurous, wonderful or tragic life. But so seldom do we see or even understand that what we see isn't their lives. Especially nowadays with news feeds, & statuses, we see only the surface, with not hint at the inner workings.To me, it's like a movie. We see the culmination of ones efforts, work, hardships, difficulties, progress, & pains. On a big screen that is life, but so rare & seldom, do we every acknowledge nor see the directorial point of view. The metaphorical behind the screens.So while we view others lives with a romantic envy, sweet longing, disheartened sympathy, or joyous reverence. We are so oblivious to the fact that their lives take the same trials, hardships, wonders, difficulties, & joys as we, it's merely manifested in a different on screen production. My longing, is to see that which is off screen. The inner workings, mundane & trivial, as well as the intense & breathtaking because without it, the picture it culminated in would not be.If we only take things at face value, we'll miss the wonders of the inner working. That which lies beyond sight, hidden away within. While it is what appears without that we all see, that which lies within makes what we see make sense.And it's in understanding someone's life & situation, that you can come to value their life & them.
Trevor Driggers
They’re always wrong in the movies.
Benjamin Percy
TV stars are cool. Even if their characters are less than admirable, they come across as somehow sympathetic, maybe even neighborly. They are, after all, people you invite into your home every week. If you don't like them, you won't watch them.Movie stars, by contrast, are hot. They have to blaze so fiercely that they fill a screen forty feet high and demand the attention of a crowded theater.That's why very few TV stars have graduated successfully to features. It requires not only different skills but a different personality. You have to go from amiable to commanding.Likewise, some movie stars are simply too big for television. Jack Nicholson is riveting on-screen, but you wouldn't want him in your living room week after week. The television simply couldn't contain his personality.
Walter Jon Williams
How speak about an art which no one recognizes as an art? I know that a great deal has already been written about the "art of the cinema". One can read about it most every day in the newspapers & the magazines. But it is not the art of the cinema which you will find discussed therein--it is rather dire, botched embryo as it now stands revealed before our eyes, the still-birth which was mangled in the womb by the obstetricians of art.
Henry Miller
The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it was not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Wells in the doorway in the Third Man.
Walker Percy
One of the most interesting accomplishments of the film community, it seems to me, is that it has made real for America the exquisite beauty of incompatibility. Divorce among the gods possesses the sweet, holy sadness that has long been associated with marriage among the mortals. There is something infinitely tender about the inability of an actor to get along with an actress. When it is all over, and the decree is final, the two are even more attentive to each other, are seen oftener together, than ever before.
E B White
Along with Batman v. Superman and Godzilla vs. Kong, I suppose we’ll get Frankenstein vs. Dracula, and perhaps Transformers vs. G.I. Joe in the HasbroVerse, and Warcraft vs. Angry Birds in the GameVerse — not to be confused with the BoardgameVerse of Battleship vs. Risk and Chutes and Ladders vs. Candy Land.And eventually all of these shared universes will collide with all of the others, including Alien vs. Predator and Freddy vs. Jason, in a Brobdingnagian rumble pitting Jedi against Pirates of the Caribbean, Terminators against Borg, and Muppets against Smurfs, world without end. Even if for some inexplicable reason that doesn’t happen, the LegoVerse will make it happen
Steven D. Greydanus
Movies were movies, whether they were old or new. They always captivated me, pulled me into worlds where anything was possible. Worlds where there were adventures and surprises, and life was never dull. The only thing I didn't like about movies was when the credits rolled and returned me to real life.
Chelsea Sedoti
We have reached a censorship barrier in Infidelity, to our infinite disappointment. It won’t be Joan’s [Joan Crawford's] next picture and we are setting it aside awhile till we can think of a way of halfwitting halfwit Hayes and his legion of decency. Pictures needed cleaning up in 1932-33...but because they were suggestive and salacious. Of course the moralists now want to apply that to all strong themes—so the crop of the last two years is feeble and false, unless it deals with children.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I lived through those books, songs, television shows, and movies - the way the characters talked, looked, acted. I thought that could translate over into reality, that I could make their world my world. I wanted so badly to run away from my life. But you can't bury yourself in other people's pages and scenes. You aren't David Copperfield or Tom Sawyer. Those love songs on the radio might speak to you, but they're not about you or the person you pine for. Life is not a John Hughes film.
Jason Diamond
If you were to ask me what it's about, I guess I'd say that it's about how joy can seem like a distant, unreachable memory, when really it can be as close as the next park bench over--if only we have the courage.
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