Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 66

A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.
George Lucas
Our stories are what we have,” Our Good Mother says. “Our stories preserve us. we give them to one another. Our stories have value. Do you understand?
Julianna Baggott
People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don't have their own song.
Neil Gaiman
Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story.
Neil Gaiman
Stories are webs, interconnected strand to strand, and you follow each story to the center, because the center is the end. Each person is a strand of the story.
Neil Gaiman
All stories are lies. But good stories are lies made from light and fire. And they lift our hearts out of the dust, and out of the grave.
Mike Carey
There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place.
J.K. Rowling
There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.
Stephen King
We're all stories, in the end.
Steven Moffat
Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.
Neil Gaiman
Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.
Neil Gaiman
What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?""Stories. And they give me hope.
Neil Gaiman
And perhaps the greatest blessing was that we never knew how short the time was.
Stephen King
They both seemed to understand that describing it was beyond their powers, the gratitude that spreads through your body when a burden gets lifted, and the sense of homecoming that follows, when you suddenly remember what it feels like to be yourself.
Tom Perrotta
She doesn't acknowledge Tucker, and there's no thank you for the cigarettes. She says a person shows their gratitude by action, not by words. So I guess that means she thanks me by smoking every cigarette in every pack.
Peter Hedges
Getting lost in the ‘big picture’ often prevents us from cherishing the 'small moments' that make it all worthwhile...
J.R. Wirth
Belittling nostalgia is a frightened man's parlor trick. Be grateful for any prize. Even a paper fortress, albeit briefly, provides shelter from the rain.
Amy Koppelman
That was as rough a thing as I ever heard tell of happening to a boy. And I'm mighty proud to learn how my boy stood up to it. You couldn't ask any more of a grown man... It's not a thing you can forget. I don't guess it's a thing you ought to forget. What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem mighty cruel and unfair, but that's how life is part of the time. But that isn't the only way life is. A part of the time, it's mighty good. And a man can't afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad.
Fred Gipson
When it was done and I went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and something that had been getting close in the dark was suddenly gone. It could not stay. It had been banished. It knew how to come back, I was sure of that, but it could not stay and I could really go to sleep. My heart cracked with gratitude. I think it was the first gratitude I’ve ever really known. I lay there beside you and the tears rolled down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between. I don’t care if you understand me. Understanding is vastly overrated, but nobody ever gets enough safety. I’ve never forgotten how safe I felt with that thing gone out of the darkness.
Stephen King
Life should be touched, not strangled.
Ray Bradbury
I couldn't imagine myself doing it anymore. It was part of my life that had ended for me, and here was my chance to set out on a fresh course
Paul Auster
Try to roll with the punches. Keep your chin up. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Vote Democrat in every election. Ride your bike in the park. Dream about my perfect, golden body. Take your vitamins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Pull for the Mets. Watch a lot of movies. Don’t work too hard at your job. Take a trip to Paris with me. Come to the hospital when Rachel has her baby and hold my grandchild in your arms. Brush your teeth after every meal. Don’t cross the street on a red light. Defend the little guy. Stick up for yourself. Remember how beautiful you are. Remember how much I love you. Drink one Scotch on the rocks every day. Breathe deeply. Keep your eyes open. Stay away from fatty foods. Sleep the sleep of the just. Remember how much I love you.
Paul Auster
There's a school of thought today that rejects patriotism. People are made nervous by that intense allegiance to a country. They think it can only lead to war and bloodshed and that fights can be avoided if we all just compromise and get along. And, of course, compromise and getting along are great things as long as you're not sacrificing essential values. But I believe there's a line in the sand, some things that you have to be willing to stand up for, even if it means trouble. Charlie's patriotism is not blind, flag-waving jingoism: it's an intense allegiance to the American concept of liberty. He's through and through. He can talk about it and explain it. And he's shown he's willing to give everything for it. I admire him for that.
Andrew Klavan
Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope cannot be killed.
Neal Shusterman
Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that – but you are the only you.
Neil Gaiman
You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.
Stephen King
…because I was only eleven years old, I was wrapped in the best cloak of invisibility in the world.
Alan Bradley
Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.
Tom Stoppard
Then you do not belong here. Death holds no sweetness in this house. We are not warriors, nor soldiers, nor swaggering bravos puffed up with pride. We do not kill to serve some lord, to fatten our purses, to stroke our vanity. We never give the gift to please ourselves. Nor do we choose the ones we kill. We are but servants of the God of Many Faces.""Valar dohaeris." All men must serve."You know the words, but you are too proud to serve. A servant must be humble and obedient.""I obey. I can be humbler than anyone."That made him chuckle. "You will be the very goddess of humility, I am sure. But can you pay the price?""What price?""The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever hope to have. We took your eyes and gave them back. Next we will take your ears, and you will walk in silence. You will give us your legs and crawl. You will be no one's daughter, no one's wife, no one's mother. Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.
George R.R. Martin
By and large, the mission of any ghost is to offer humility. They point out what's important by mocking what is not.(Joshua Malina, Sports Night)
Aaron Sorkin
There is a world of difference between being clever and being right.
Ian Driscoll
It hurt to think that a boy would not have him at his value of himself.
Richard Llewellyn
You will only learn in a fight how much you've got to learn.
Richard Llewellyn
If I have learned one thing in the years of my existence, one nugget of wisdom from having lived in the midst of disputations over faith and the nature of the world, it is that everything ends. This is both the blessing and the punishment of God upon the foolish tribe that calls itself man. We can embrace the end or we can weep, but the ghost of time closes all doors with a finality that can never be gainsaid.
Kamran Pasha
I've never met a soldier who knew he was a hero. It's not false modesty. They simply decide to do something that they know they must do, usually for there comrades, because if they don't, those people will suffer in some way. For them, that compulsion is far stronger than any fear. The fact we find it exceptional is a sad indictment of the human race. I'd like to live in a world of heroes. If we did, there would be no wars.
Karen Traviss
Oh ... why not?' he smiled. "This valley is a pleasant spot for meditation. I like New England... it is here that I have experienced some of my greatest successes - and several notable defeats. Defeat, you know, is not such a bad thing, if there's not too much of it... it makes for humility, and humility makes for caution, therefore for safety.' ("Trace")
Jerome Bixby
It pained her that a few hundred words in an also-ran newspaper could get her kicked out. That damned article.And Rook.Her sharpest agony. She had invested in this guy. Waited for this guy. Felt something for this guy that went beyond the bedroom ... or wherever else they took each other. Nikki did not give herself easily to a man, and this betrayal by Rook was why. Heat reflected on her answer at the oral boards about her greatest flaw and admitted her reply was a mask. Yes, her identification with her job was total. But her greatest flaw wasn’t overinvestment in her career. It was her reticence to be vulnerable. Unarmed as she was-literally-she had been emotionally so with Rook.That was the gut shot that had blown clean through her soul.
Richard Castle
We will do anything to get away from our own pain. We will change our lives, rip people out, swallow a bottle of life-ending pills. When we hurt more than we can bear, when our lives get that dark, it's shocking what we will do to protect ourselves.
Pamela Ribon
...it was amazing, wasn't it, how bad you could hurt when there was nothing physically wrong.
Stephen King
The dead can't hurt you, they're dead. Living things can hurt you, living people can hurt you but the dead can't.
Neil Gaiman
You know I blamed Craig for not letting me do things? You know how stupid I feel about that now? Maybe he didn't really encourage me to do things, but he didn't prevent me from doing them either. But after a while, I didn't do things because I didn't want him to think different about me. But the things is, I wasn't being honest. So, why would I care whether or not he loved me when he didn't really even know me?
Stephen Chbosky
Sometimes the only thing to do is to take the thing that you must have. Even if someone gets hurt.
Stephen King
Those days are gone, and good fucking riddance to them; unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it's just a drag, like a cold or having no money. If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.
Nick Hornby
Monk worked on his remaining Intertect cases at his dining table while I tried to hone my detecting instincts by reading the Murder, She Wrote novel he bought in Mill Valley.I can't say that I learned much about investigative procedure but I discovered that you should stay far away from Cabot Cove. That tiny New England village is deadlier than Beirut, South Central Los Angeles, and the darkest back alley in Juarez combined. Even though every killer eventually gets caught by Jessica Fletcher, I still wouldn't feel safe there. I'm surprised the old biddy walks around town unarmed.
Lee Goldberg
On the plus side, there were no rioters in sight but on the minus side this was probably because everywhere I looked was on fire.
Ben Aaronovitch
A book can be as dangerous as a sword in the right hands, said Haldon.
George R.R. Martin
We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.
Roger Ebert
Wherever I am, if I've got a book with me, I have a place I can go and be h
J.K. Rowling
All they told me was that he was forty-two when he died. I just wanted...to find out more about what kind of person he was.I could tell you more, amanda thought to herself. A lot more. She'd suspected the truth since Morgan Tanner had called, and she'd made some calls to confirm her suspicions. Dawson, she'd learned, had been taking off life support at CarolinaEast Regional Medical Center late Monday night. He's been kept alive long after doctors knew he would never recover, because he was an organ donor.Dawson, she knews, had saved Alan's life-but in the end, he'd saved Jared's as well. And for that meant...everything. I gave you the best of me, he'd told her once, and with every beat of her son's heart, she knew he'd done exactly that. How about a quick hug," she said, "before we go inside?" Jared rolled his eyes, but he opened his arms anyway. "I love you, Mom," he mumbled, pulling her close. Amanda closed her eyes, feeling the steady rhythm in his chest. "I love you, too.
Nicholas Sparks
This book is the book you have just read. It’s done.
Neil Gaiman
Aren't you two ever going to read Hogwarts, A History?""What's the point?" said Ron. "You know it by heart, we can just ask you.
J.K. Rowling
I'm not most people. I have no patience for those who can't execute a plan with elegance.
David Iserson
You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Christopher Nolan
You can no more read the same book again than you can step into the same river.
Neil Gaiman
It was the literary equivalent of a brown paper bag.
C. Robert Cargill
But I was also told to hold doors for women and children, to shake hands with a firm grip, to remember people's names, and to always give the customer a little more than expected.
Nicholas Sparks
If a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horse-shit
Stephen King
Leave him alone!" Debbie shouted."Shut up, please, or I'll kill you," Mr Tiny replied.
Darren Shan
Things change, friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.
Stephen Chbosky
I despair of ever getting it through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.
Helene Hanff