Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 43

You know you're officially an adult when you finally understand WHY Miss Hannigan was drinking bath water.
Christy Hall
Q: Best part about being a musical theatre book writer?A: Explaining what that is.
Christy Hall
If I were to be honest, I'm probably fifty percent bagel. Okay, fine, sixty percent.
Christy Hall
Merry Christmas," said George. "Don't go downstairs for a bit.""Why not?" said Ron."Mum's crying again," said Fred heavily. "Percy sent back his Christmas jumper." [I guess that's a sweater, though my jury is still out on it until I get a future confirmation.]"Without a not," added George. "Hasn't asked how Dad is or visit him [in the hospital] or anything...""We tried to comfort her," said Fred, moving around the bed to look at Harry's portrait. "Told her Percy's nothing but a humongous pile of rat droppings--""--didn't work," said George, helping himself to a Chocolate Frog. "So Lupin took over. Best let him cheer her up before we go down for breakfast, I reckon.
J.K. Rowling
I was very sorry to hear about your losses. Your brother was a terrible traitor, I know, but if we start killing men at weddings they'll be more frightened of marriage than they are presently. (Olenna Tyrell to Sansa Stark
George R.R. Martin
Okay, I've only just found out the final lineup for Slytherin," said Angelina, consulting a piece of parchment. "Last year's Beaters, Derrick and Bole, have left now, but it looks as though Montague's replaced them with the usual gorillas, rather than anyone who can fly particularly well. They're two blokes called Crabbe and Goyle. I don't know much about them--""We do," said Harry and Ron together."Well they don't look bright enough to tell one end of a broom from another," said Angelina, pocketing her parchment, "but then I was always surprised Derrick and Bole managed to find their way onto the pitch without signposts.""Crabbe and Goyle are in the same mold," Harry assured her.
J.K. Rowling
Mr. Morrow, IOI owns this network..." "Of course they do!" Morrow shouted gleefully. 'The own practically everything! Including you, pretty boy! I mean did they tattoo a UPC code on your ass when they hired you to sit there and spout their corporate propaganda?
Ernest Cline
It’s impossible to park on Tremont or even idle there for more than thirty seconds. A platoon of meter maids, imported from the female Hitler Youth shortly after the fall of Berlin, roam the street, at least two to a block, pit bull faces on top of fire hydrant bodies, just waiting for someone stupid enough to stall traffic on their street.
Dennis Lehane
He was a self-righteous know-it-all who had the breath of a dung beetle, a gray ponytail he barely pulled together from the bozo ring of hair clinging to his balding, freckled dome, and loved to drink, of all things, tea. Usually it was some sickly sweet-smelling herbal crap that was made in the hippie wasteland of Boulder, Colorado. The box was festooned with the image of a happy, dancing bear in a field of multicolored flowers and the tea had some idiotic name like Tai Chai. After work one evening, I snatched the box of tea bags from the break room and changed the recipe. I wasn't really worried that any other employees would use one of the tea bags because NO ONE DRINKS FUCKING TEA AT WORK, especially not the totally useless, noncaffeinated fairy tears reserved for old maids to sip while they watch Murder, She Wrote in bed with their legion of cats.
Shane Kuhn
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flamethrower.
Bruce Feirstein
She looked out and saw a tall and comely woman beckoning to her. Susannah's first look at Mia in the flesh astounded her, because the chap's mother was *white.* Apparently Odetta-that-was now had a Caucasian side to her personality and how that must frost Detta Walker's racially sensitive butt!
Stephen King
You probably drink too much. If you hand me that bottle, I'll reduce your temptations. --Augustus "Gus" McCrae
Larry McMurtry
The P-38 WWII Nazi handgun looks comical lying on the breakfast table next to a bowl of oatmeal.
Matthew Quick
If you dont like my book write your own.
Rita Mae Brown
That's all you need? Easy. I love you.Okay? Want it louder?I love you. Spell it out schould I l-o-v-e y-o-u. Want it backwards You love I.
William Goldman
I just want you to know,' said the girl, coldly, 'that whoever you are and whatever you intend with me, I shall give you no aid of any kind, nor shall I assist you, and I shall do whatever is in my power to frustrate your plans and devices.' And then she added, with feeling, 'Idiot.
Neil Gaiman
Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale - to the Jag mobile.
Ben Aaronovitch
I’ve seen you in action, BB. You get turned on by danger. You are seeking danger. The only reason you’re with me is the risk of getting caught by your wife.”Ingrid aka ‘Alis K’The Informer by Steen Langstrup
Steen Langstrup
You’re not leaving. I told you that.” She worked to keep the calm in her tone to counter his fury. “I’m going to shoot.” “It’s time to put your gun down, Noah.” “His blood will be on you.” Rook made eye contact with her and mouthed, Shoot. Him. She had no shot and said so with the smallest head shake.
Richard Castle
Perhaps you should speak more softly to me, then. Monsters are dangerous beasts, and just now kings seem to be dying like flies.
George R.R. Martin
Sometimes, when someone lives in danger for too long, the only time they feel alive is when death's breathing on their shoulder.
Joe Abercrombie
Every secret of the body was rendered up--bone risen through flesh, sacrilegious glimpses of an intestine or an optic nerve. From this new and intimate perspective, [Briony] learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.
Ian McEwan
Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This gawky wormbent tabernacle.
Cormac McCarthy
The body is the garden of the soul.
Tony Kushner
You dedicate your life to the pursuit of pleasure. No over-indulgence, mind you, but knowing that your body is apleasure machine, you treat it carefully in order to get the most out of it.
Nathanael West
…Those who’ve marred their appearance in any way by their actions in life aren’t forced to witness that marring. If they were, they’d become self-conscious and be unable to concentrate on improving themselves.
Richard Matheson
Modern man has successfully razed the imaginative landscapes of primal peoples the whole world over. Kill the gods first, slaughter the sacred animals, rewrite the mythologies, and build roads through the holy places. Do all this and watch the people decline. Without souls, they soon die, leaving dead shells, zombie cultures, shambling aimlessly towards oblivion.
Grant Morrison
Pardon my French if you're a religious man.''I am,' Bill said, grinning.'Then get outta my cab and go to fucking church,' the cabbie said, and they both burst out laughing.
Stephen King
Most prayers are not really questions...and if we listen very closely, a prayer is often its own answer. ...We pray because we are here - not to change the world, but to change ourselves. Because it is when we change ourselves...that the world is changed.
Douglas Wood
Guess that's thirty-one pieces of silver you've got now, huh? Sleep well, Judas.
Mark Millar
Who can know when his world is going to change? Who can tell before it happens, that every priorexperience, all the years, were a preparation for . . . nothing.
William Goldman
What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antartic, or coming down as rain in rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.
Mark Haddon
Energy has a way of dissipating, you know; what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again.
Stephen King
Your writing should be filled with simple complexities and complex simplicities. Because that is life.
Christy Hall
You know you are a writer when characters inside your brain keep demanding, 'This is my story! Now tell it or I will never leave you alone!
Christy Hall
We’re all photojournalists now. It’s no longer enough just to write.
David Cronenberg
Live inside your stories, yes, but do not hide behind them.
Christy Hall
To be able to influence Tanzanian literature and African literature, and sell our books in Tanzania as well as in our continent, we need to be committed to what we do. And what we do is writing. Write as much as you can. Read as much as you can. Use the library and the internet carefully for research and talk to people, about things that matter. To make a living from writing, and make people read again in Tanzania and Africa; we must write very well, very good stories.
Enock Maregesi
..no meal is good enough to justify all the money and effort wasted in preparing it. It is an illusion and an expense. Live as I do, undeceived.
Peter S Beagle
He tried to read her heart in her handclasp but he knew nothing.
Cormac McCarthy
From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else. She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel the minutes crawling over her like worms.
Peter S Beagle
Doubt is the thing that’ll kill you, the only thing, and it’ll kill your friends, too.
Ron Leshem
I had to nurture those doubts as if they were tiny, sickly kittens, until eventually they became sturdy, healthy grievances, with their own cat doors, which allowed them to wander in and out of our conversation at will.
Nick Hornby
Why is it, I wonder, that people suffer, when there is so little need, when an effort of will and some hard work would bring them from their misery into peace and contentment.
Richard Llewellyn
Sometimes, the embers are better then the campfire. It's strange, but it's true.
Stephen King
Lots of people wrote to the magazine to say that Marilyn vos Savant was wrong, even when she explained very carefully why she was right. Of the letters she got about the problem, 92% said that she was wrong and lots of these were from mathematicians and scientists. Here are some of the things they said: 'I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error.' -Robert Sachs, Ph.D., George Mason University ... 'I am sure you will receive many letters from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for future columns.' -W. Robert Smith, Ph.D., Georgia State University... 'If all those Ph.D.'s were wrong, the country would be in very serious trouble.' -Everett Harman, Ph.D., U.S. Army Research Institute
Mark Haddon
Doakes had a first name! It was Albert - had anyone ever really called him that? Unthinkable. I had assumed his name was Sergeant.
Jeff Lindsay
I didn't think that Herefordshire Social Services would be best pleased about me dumping a poorly socialised pre-teen with mind control powers on them.
Ben Aaronovitch
There's always a 'she'. Isn't there?
Dennis Lehane
I'm not a slave, man. I just gotta sign out, say where I'm going, what time I'll be back and then I gotta sign back in.
Ben H. Winters
sometimes there is too much irony all piled up in the barn, and you have to / pitchfork another steaming pile of irony on top of it all, and you have to / pitchfork another, and another, and another / when the world is shit-streaked with irony that is when beauty will emerge / love is irony / purists sure hate farce / but pushing against things is the only possible way to live
Mark Leidner
I must be overtired', Buttercup managed. 'The excitement and all.''Rest then', her mother cautioned. 'Terrible things can happen when you're overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.
William Goldman
Ironic, isn’t it?” Shawn said.“It’s not ironic at all,” Gus said.“Dude, it’s so like a black fly in your chardonnay.”“How many times do I have to tell you that’s not ironic, either?”“Rain on your wedding day?”“‘Irony’ is the use of words to convey a meaning that’s opposite to their literal meaning,” Gus said. “That stupid song came out fourteen years ago, and we still have this exact conversation at least once a week.”“Yeah,” Shawn said. “Ironic, isn’t it?
William Rabkin
Even You-Know-Who can't split himself into seven.
J.K. Rowling
I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite. There!
Ray Bradbury
Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: "At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You'd be surprised how effective it can be.
Woody Allen
The things I do for love.
George R.R. Martin
Knowledge does not come through force. it can not be taken, it can only be freely received.
Kirsten Beyer
Knowledge does not come through force. It can not be taken, it can only be freely received
Kirsten Beyer
Her support was a constant, one of the few good things I could take as a given. And whenever I see a first novel dedicated to a wife (or a husband), I smile and think, There’s someone who knows.” Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.
Stephen King