Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 67

Let's look at one more quick example of modern evolution atwork. In the early 1800s, light-colored lichens covered many ofthe trees in the English countryside. The peppered moth was alight-colored insect that blended in unnoticeably with the lichens.Predators had great difficulty distinguishing the peppered mothfrom its background environment, so the moths easily survivedand reproduced. Then the Industrial Revolution came to the English country-side. Coal-burning factories turned the lichens a sooty black. Thelight-colored peppered moth became clearly visible. Most of themwere eaten. But because of genetic variation and mutation, a fewpeppered moths displayed a slightly darker color. These darkermoths were better able to blend in with the sooty lichens, and solived to produce other darker-colored moths. In little over a hun-dred years, successive generations of peppered moths evolvedfrom almost completely white to completely black. Natural selec-tion, rather than "random accident," guided the moth's evolution-ary progress.
David Mills
Individual humans are not super, but the organism of which we are all tiny cellular parts is most certainly that. The life-form that's so big we forget it's there, that turns minerals on its planet into tools to touch the infinite black gap between stars or probe the obliterating pressures at the bottom of the oceans. We are already part of a superbeing, a monster, a god, a living process that is so all encompassing that it is to an individual life what water is to a fish. We are cells in the body of a three-billion-year-old life-form whose roots are in the Precambrian oceans and whose genetic wiring extends through the living structures of everything on the planet, connecting everything that has ever lived in one immense nervous system.
Grant Morrison
people believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance.
Mark Haddon
It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.
Ian McEwan
Interesting, Miles thought. Like himself, Father Mark, as a child, had been reassured by the imagined proximity of God, whereas adults, perhaps because they so often were up to no good, took more comfort from His remoteness.
Richard Russo
When I was a young man and very well thought of,I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins,And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied. But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know The secret I shelter and savor and save I wait for the one who will see through my seeming, And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens;The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned. But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them see There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave. My lady is late but she'll find I've been faithful, And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'At last came a lady both knowing and tender,Saying, 'you're not at all what they take you to be.'I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea. And I say to myself when there's time for a word, As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved, 'Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.
Peter S Beagle
[It] could be argued that the favorite sin of Satan would not be vanity, as described in 'Devil's Advocate', or even unbelief in the existence of the devil, as described in 'The Usual Suspects,' but the imagining of a generic, Christless God. The very essence of the Christian faith centers on the identity of Jesus Christ as God's only begotten Son, who alone is the source of salvation and author of faith (Acts 4:12). So it stands to reason that Satan's favorite sin is the belief in a God without Jesus, because that is a god without atonement or redemption and that is what populates hell in the name of heaven.
Brian Godawa
Be sure your sin will find you out...Be sure.
Stephen King
Well-lit streets discourage sin, but don't overdo it.
William Kennedy
There was no one innocent amongst us, I realized then. We were all sinners, one way or the other. We hurt with our hands, with our mouths, or with our minds. But what matters was the ‘why’.~Eyes of a Goddess
Ukamaka Olisakwe
The woman I loved died because I did not love her enough - what greater sin is there than that?"(Uncle Chaim and Aunt Fifke and the Angel)
Peter S Beagle
To err is human - but it feels divine.
Mae West
God knows I'm not perfect, either. I've made tons of stupid mistakes, and later I regretted them. And I've done it over and over again, thousands of times; a cycle of hollow joy and vicious self-hatred. But even so, every time I learned something about myself-Misato Katsuragi
Hideaki Anno
This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.
Neal Shusterman
And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.
Neil Gaiman
The bad end unhappily; the good, unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
Tom Stoppard
It took me twenty years of living with my father to accept the idea that being good could be good enough.
Stephen King
Have I said anything I started out to say about being good? God, I don’t know. A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.
Ray Bradbury
It really is better to be lucky than to be good.
Jeff Lindsay
The fifties are a peaceful time, a quiet sleeping time between two noisy bursts of years, a blue and white time filled with sweet yellow days, music and bright smelling memories.
David Gerrold
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better, [Cloquet thought,] while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.
Woody Allen
Being good is commendable, but only when it is combined with doing good is it useful
Stephen King
Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law, Miss Granger?” asked Scrimgeour.“No, I’m not,” retorted Hermione. “I’m hoping to do some good in the world!
J.K. Rowling
Madame Kovarian: The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules.The Doctor: Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.
Steven Moffat
A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.
Stephen King
No man ever truly possesses a woman, anyhow," said Gidas moodily. "He has her body for a time if he's lucky, but only the most fleeting glimpse into her soul." Gidas was a poet, or wanted to be.
Guy Gavriel Kay
She was a woman with a broom or a dust-pan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You sawher cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or yousaw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in,cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringerto their place. She glided through the halls as steadily as avacuum machine, seeking, finding, and setting to rights. Shemade mirrors of every window, to catch the sun. She strolledbut twice through any garden, trowel in hand, and the flowersraised their quivering fires upon the warm air in her wake.She slept quietly and turned no more than three times in anight, as relaxed as a White glove to which, at dawn, a brisk hand will return. Waking, she touched people like pictures,to set their frames straight.
Ray Bradbury
If every woman had a direwolf, men would be much sweeter.
George R.R. Martin
Could any woman live every day with that level of masculinity?
Larry McMurtry
She was one of those languid women, made of dark honey, smooth and sweet, and terribly sticky, who take control of a room with a syrupy gesture, a toss of the hair, a single slow whiplash of the eyes — and all the while remain as still as the centre of a hurricane, apparently unaware of the force of gravity by which they irresistibly attract themselves the yearnings and the souls of both men and women.
Patrick Süskind
It seemed to him there was never much time with women. Before you could look at one twice, you were into an argument, and they were telling you what was going to happen.
Larry McMurtry
It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good.
Larry McMurtry
A man can own a woman, and a man can own a knife, but no man can own both,
George R.R. Martin
So here I am, upside down in a woman.
Ian McEwan
She wasn't much over five feet and a hundred pounds, and she looked a little scrawny around the neck and ankles. But that was all right. It was perfectly all right. The good Lord had known just where to put that flesh where it would really do some good.
Jim Thompson
I used that black magical elixir as amulet against all bad things and thoughts for that day. On the other hand, it was a liquid talisman for everybody else, to save them from being strangled by me.
Mladen Đorđević
A shy smile, strong arms, clever fingers, and two sure swords. What more could any woman want?
George R.R. Martin
Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman? (wonders Lady Catelyn Stark)
George R.R. Martin
I'm a woman. I have a right to change my mind.
Sidney Sheldon
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
Tom Stoppard
I made a note to talk to him about soft drinks. Those beverages are not healthy.from counting by 7s (not listed in drop-down)
Holly Goldberg Sloan
I knew I wasn't the picture of health, but I didn't think I was headed for the last roundup.
Fannie Flagg
Issues are like tissues. You pull one out and another appears!
Gary Goldstein
It was a cruel fate, Yet not so cruel as Mago's will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.
George R.R. Martin
Lem glowered. "Your lion friends ride into some village, take all the food and every coin they find, and call it foraging. the wolves as well, so why not us? no one robbed you, dog. You just been good and foraged.
George R.R. Martin
We don't steal from the rich and give to the poor. We steal from the poor because they can't fight back --most of them-- and the rich take from us because they could wipe us out in a day.
Peter S Beagle
Philosophy consists in moderating each life so that many lives will fit together with as much liberty and justice as will keep them together: and not so much as will make them fly apart, when the harm will be the greater.
Tom Stoppard
Pritchard tutted. "Justice? Justice is even more problematic than truth. It's an emergent property of a very complicated system.
M.R. Carey
Truth, justice and the American way. The American way is: truth and justice maybe say hello in the hallway, send each other a Christmas card, but that’s about the extent of their relationship.
Don Winslow
I think about that story a lot now. People in a boat, waiting, terrified, while implacable, unsmiling men, irresistibly strong, seize …. Maybe the person next to you, maybe you, and with no warning at all, with time only for a quick intake of air you are pitched into freezing, turbulent water and salt and darkness to drown.
Tony Kushner
Fat Charlie had had no real liking for the police, but until now, he had still managed to cling to a fundamental trust in the natural order of things, a conviction that there was some kind of power--a Victorian might have thought of it as Providence--that ensured that the guilty would be punished while the innocent would be set free. This faith had collapsed in the face of recent events and had been replaced by the suspicion that he would spend the rest of his life pleading his innocence to a variety of implacable judges and tormenters, many of whom would look like Daisy, and that he would in all probability wake up in cell six the next morning to find that he had been transformed into an enormous cockroach. He had definitely been transported to the kind of maleficent universe that transformed people into cockroaches.
Neil Gaiman
...the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.""...a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
George R.R. Martin
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.
George R.R. Martin
So do not waste my time. It is the most precious thing I have, time. It is the most precious thing any of us have.
George R.R. Martin
Under the blanket the outline of her body was slender and displayed a certain innocence, a precious quality far more significant than the elegance of her form. She seemed to radiate kindness and essential goodness, and Darby, trying to measure the value of her, told himself it was immeasurable.
David Goodis
Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never exist again.
Gore Vidal
Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.
Tom Stoppard
He didn't like religion, hadn't liked it for years, but he adored churches, loved them like old scientific instruments whose time is long past but are nevertheless fascinating and strange.
Bruce Robinson
I'm Godless. And so I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is -- ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme.
Darren Aronofsky
There is no higher authority.
Russell T. Davies