Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 7

I dont believe knowing can save us. What isconstant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God—who knows all that can be known—seems powerless to change.
Cormac McCarthy
What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and live out.
Steven Pressfield
An old Russian proverb . . . "Where hangs the smoke of hate burns a fiercer fire called fear."The trick . . . was to keep that fire alive, but to know at the same time it might consume you also. Then the trick was to make the fear invisible in the smokes of hatred. Having accomplished that, you would own men's souls and your power would be absolute, so long as you never allowed men to see that their hate was but fear, and so long as you, afraid, knowing it, hence more shrewd and cautious than the rest, did not become a corpse at the hands of the hating fearful. There, in a nutshell, was the recipe for dictatorship. Over the proletariat. Over the godly believers. Over the heathen. Over all men, even those who imagined they were free and yet could be made to hate.Frighten; then furnish the whipping boys. Then seize.
Philip Wylie
Once again I felt light-headed, but this time it wasn't from the scent of lilacs; it was from the scent of my own death.
Peter David
His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin.
George R.R. Martin
They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressure; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.
Ray Bradbury
Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.
Neil Gaiman
Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Stephen King
A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.
George R.R. Martin
Who can know when his world is going to change? . . . Who would suspect that in the morning a different child would wake? . . . Perhaps I should have at least known something, but maybe not; who can sense revelation in the wind?What happened was just this: I got hooked on the story.For the first time in my life, I became actively interested in a book. Me the sports fanatic, me the game freak, me the only ten-year-old in Illinois with a hate on for the alphabet wanted to know what happened next.
William Goldman
If I show up at your house ten years from now and find nothing in your living room but The Readers Digest, nothing on your bedroom night table but the newest Dan Brown novel, and nothing in your bathroom but Jokes for the John, I’ll chase you down to the end of your driveway and back, screaming ‘Where are your books? You graduated college ten years ago, so how come there are no damn books in your house? Why are you living on the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?
Stephen King
How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!
Ray Bradbury
Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.
Neil Gaiman
Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.
Neil Gaiman
It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over the controls of a classic arcade game. It was the sort of surreal image you'd expect to see on the cover of an old issue of Heavy Metal or Dragon magazine.
Ernest Cline
It illuminated a vision Dante could not have imagined in his wildest nightmares, nor Poe in the grasp of an uncontrollable delirium.
Alan Dean Foster
Quick dinner with ... Ang [Lee] and his wife Jane who's visiting with the children for a while. We talked about her work as a microbiologist and the behaviour of the epithingalingie under the influence of cholesterol. She's fascinated by cholesterol. Says it's very beautiful: bright yellow. She says Ang is wholly uninterested. He has no idea what she does.I check this out for myself. 'What does Jane do?' I ask.'Science,' he says vaguely.
Emma Thompson
...Today the invisible hand seems confused and indecisive...Ideology and rhetoric increasingly guide policy decision, often bearing little relationship to factual reality. And the America we once knew seems divided and angry, defiantly embracing unreason.
Shawn Lawrence Otto
What? Why are you making the glee nose? The death of my world is funny? The final vengeance of my people? I will kill you.
Jackson Lanzing
We walked on the moon. We made footprints somewhere no one else had ever made footprints, and unless someone comes and rubs them out, those footprints will be there forever because there’s no wind.
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Quirky, funny, happy-go-lucky dead inside Dexter. No longer Dexter with the knife, Dexter the Avenger. Not until next time.
Jeff Lindsay
It's alright" said a dreamy voice from beside Harry as Ron vanished into the coach's dark interior. "You're not going mad or anything. I can see them too.""Can you?" said Harry desperately, turning to Luna. He could see the bat-winged horses reflected in her wide, silvery eyes."Oh yes," said Luna, "I've been able to see them since my first year here. They've always pulled the carriages. Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am."Smiling faintly, she climbed into the musty interior of the carriage after Ron. Not altogether reassured, Harry followed her.
J.K. Rowling
Cara: *Flies*Gen: What? I don't have wings!Cara: Ofcourse not! You're a boy.
Jim Henson
He laughed and was about to retort when she grabbed his collar and pulled him into her. She clamped her lips around his mouth and mashed her face into his. He took a step back in surprise and she went with him, stepping in a patch of wet floor. Her legs went out from under her and flailed as she fell, whacking him in the throat on the way down. She looked up at him as he gagged and coughed, and from across the corridor she could hear Tanith laughing hysterically. "I think I need practice," Valkyrie muttered.
Derek Landy
Divination is turning out to be much more trouble than I could have foreseen, never having studied the subject myself.
J.K. Rowling
Radical Edwards's profile? He's a seven-foot tall ex-basketball pro hindu guru drag-queen alien.-Jet Black, from the Cowboy Bebop anime script
Keiko Nobumoto
Hackers are nerdy, pasty, tubby, little geeks with triple thick glasses and this is probably a demented otaku with smelly feet. So catching him will be a breeze!
Keiko Nobumoto
Aurora sagged. "Why is it," she asked, "that every time I'm with you two we end up stealing something big?""We always return it," Donegan said, a little defensively. "Maybe not always in one piece or necessarily to the right person but return it we do, and so it is not stealing, it is merely borrowing."Gracious looked at him. "It's a little bit stea
Derek Landy
We were talking about the prince,' Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss.Arya knew which prince she meant: Joffrey, of course. The tall, handsome one. Sansa got to sit with him at the feast. Arya had to sit with the little fat one. Naturally.
George R.R. Martin
Restaurants are minefields for the socially inept
Graeme Simsion
The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.
George R.R. Martin
It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over the controls of a classic arcade game. It was the sort of surreal image you'd expect to see on the cover of an old issue of Heavy Metal or Dragon magazine.
Ernest Cline
Quick dinner with ... Ang [Lee] and his wife Jane who's visiting with the children for a while. We talked about her work as a microbiologist and the behaviour of the epithingalingie under the influence of cholesterol. She's fascinated by cholesterol. Says it's very beautiful: bright yellow. She says Ang is wholly uninterested. He has no idea what she does.I check this out for myself. 'What does Jane do?' I ask.'Science,' he says vaguely.
Emma Thompson
It's alright" said a dreamy voice from beside Harry as Ron vanished into the coach's dark interior. "You're not going mad or anything. I can see them too.""Can you?" said Harry desperately, turning to Luna. He could see the bat-winged horses reflected in her wide, silvery eyes."Oh yes," said Luna, "I've been able to see them since my first year here. They've always pulled the carriages. Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am."Smiling faintly, she climbed into the musty interior of the carriage after Ron. Not altogether reassured, Harry followed her.
J.K. Rowling
She tried to smile sympathetically, but with her face it wasn't quite possible.
Anthony Horowitz
He laughed and was about to retort when she grabbed his collar and pulled him into her. She clamped her lips around his mouth and mashed her face into his. He took a step back in surprise and she went with him, stepping in a patch of wet floor. Her legs went out from under her and flailed as she fell, whacking him in the throat on the way down. She looked up at him as he gagged and coughed, and from across the corridor she could hear Tanith laughing hysterically. "I think I need practice," Valkyrie muttered.
Derek Landy
Radical Edwards's profile? He's a seven-foot tall ex-basketball pro hindu guru drag-queen alien.-Jet Black, from the Cowboy Bebop anime script
Keiko Nobumoto
Hackers are nerdy, pasty, tubby, little geeks with triple thick glasses and this is probably a demented otaku with smelly feet. So catching him will be a breeze!
Keiko Nobumoto
Aurora sagged. "Why is it," she asked, "that every time I'm with you two we end up stealing something big?""We always return it," Donegan said, a little defensively. "Maybe not always in one piece or necessarily to the right person but return it we do, and so it is not stealing, it is merely borrowing."Gracious looked at him. "It's a little bit stea
Derek Landy
Restaurants are minefields for the socially inept
Graeme Simsion
I should go in alone," Valkyrie said, speaking loudly to be heard. "If we both go in, it'll look to official.""So I'll just stay out here?" Skulduggery asked. "But what'll I do? There's no one to talk to. It's boring.""You're standing on the roof of a train," Valkyrie pointed out. "If you find this boring, you really need your head examined. Just wait here. I'll do what has to be done and I'll be find out."Fine," he said, sounding grumpy. "Don't be long.
Derek Landy
Be careful you don't cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.''Girls don't shave', Arya said.'Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa's legs?
George R.R. Martin
I have a brother. They say, you put us together, we are like one person, you know? When we are young, his hair, it is very blond, very light, and people say, he is the good one. And my hair it is very dark, darker than yours even, and people say I am the rogue, you know? I am the bad one. And now time passes, and my hair is gray. His hair too, I think, is gray. And you look at us, you would not know who was light, who was dark.
Neil Gaiman
Why did they go away, do you think? If there ever were such things.""Who knows? Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?""No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his time a good time for unicorns.
Peter S Beagle
Time is Galleons, little brother.
J.K. Rowling
It's a hard life if you don't weaken.
Stephen King
They hate you because you act like you're better than they are...." "[they are] Four that you humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you. I’ve watched you fight. It’s not training with you. Put a good edge on your sword, and they’d be dead meat; you know it, I know it, they know it. You leave them nothing. You shame them. Does that make you proud?
George R.R. Martin
Our light shall burn the pathway to the stars
Mladen Đorđević
My Aunt Helen was my favorite person in the whole world. She was my mom’s sister. She got straight A’s when she was a teenager and she used to give me books to read. My father said that the books were a little too old for me, but I liked them so he just shrugged and let me read.
Stephen Chbosky
Men want a girl who looks like a boy. They want to protect her but she must be a survivor. And she must come...like a train...but with...elegance.
Patrick Marber
My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.
Gillian Flynn
Watch movies. Read screenplays. Let them be your guide. […] Yes, McKee has been able to break down how the popular screenplay has worked. He has identified key qualities that many commercially successful screenplays share, he has codified a language that has been adopted by creative executives in both film and television. So there might be something of tangible value to be gained by interacting with his material, either in book form or at one of the seminars.But for someone who wants to be an artist, a creator, an architect of an original vision, the best book to read on screenwriting is no book on screenwriting. The best seminar is no seminar at all.To me, the writer wants to get as many outside voices OUT of his/her head as possible. Experts win by getting us to be dependent on their view of the world. They win when they get to frame the discussion, when they get to tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to think about the game, whatever the game is. Because that makes you dependent on them. If they have the secret rules, then you need them if you want toget ahead.The truth is, you do
Brian Koppelman
When you choose to look down on something, you render yourself incapable of understanding it.
Stewart Stafford
You can’t destroy knowledge. You can stamp it under and burn it up and forbid it to be, but somewhere it will survive.
Leigh Brackett
For if we're destroyed, the knowledge is dead...We're nothing more than dust jackets for books...so many pages to a person...
Ray Bradbury
The woman who preaches has poison religion. Let the respectable ones go
Stephen King
A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.
Rita Mae Brown
It seems to occur to few of the attendees [of a writing retreat] that if you have a feel you just can't describe, you might just be, I don't know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.
Stephen King
The book was blunt and had an honesty about it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie.
Bret Easton Ellis
If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.
Aaron Sorkin