Quotes by Filmmakers - Page 3

The age-old, seemingly inexorable process whereby diseases acquire meanings (by coming to stand for the deepest fears) and inflict stigma is always worth challenging, and it does seem to have more limited credibility in the modern world, among people willing to be modern - the process is under surveillance now. With this illness, one that elicits so much guilt and shame, the effort to detach it from these meanings, these metaphors, seems particularly liberating, even consoling. But the metaphors cannot be distanced just by abstaining from them. They have to be exposed, criticized, belabored, used up.
Susan Sontag
Anyone who feels to much or radiates extremity gets very lonely.
Chris Kraus
The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone inscription marking simply the dates of birth and death has, in its brevity, much to recommend it.
Michel Houellebecq
Coach said. "the quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor".
Sherman Alexie
The only time they ever throw anything away is when it's really and truly broken, and then they make a big deal about it. They save up all their bent pins and broken sewing needles and once a year they do a whole memorial service for them, chanting and then sticking them into a block of tofu so they will have a nice soft place to rest. Jiko says that everything has a spirit, even if it is old and useless, and we must console and honor the things that have served us well.
Ruth Ozeki
I was a black center in the middle of all the nature. I was nothing, but I could do anything.
James Franco
I'd only seen Julius play a few times, but he had that gift, that grace, those fingers like a goddamn medicine man. One time, when the tribal school traveled to Spokane to play this white high school team, Julius scored sixty-seven points and the Indians won by forty.I didn't know they'd be riding horses," I heard the coach of the white team say when I was leaving....Hey," I asked Adrian. "Remember Silas Sirius?"Hell," Adrian said. "Do I remember? I was there when he grabbed that defensive rebound, took a step, and flew the length of the court, did a full spin in midair, and then dunked that fucking ball. And I don't mean it looked like he flew, or it was so beautiful it was almost like he flew. I mean, he flew, period."I laughed, slapped my legs, and knew that I believed Adrian's story more as it sounded less true.Shit," he continued. "And he didn't grow no wings. He just kicked his legs a little. Held that ball like a baby in his hand. And he was smiling. Really. Smiling when he flew. Smiling when he dunked it, smiling when he walked off the court and never came back. Hell, he was still smiling ten years after that.
Sherman Alexie
In my heart, I am American, and I believe I have a free will and can take charge of my own destiny.
Ruth Ozeki
Art is what you get away with
Andy Warhol
To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.
Charlie Chaplin
Comrades, we are going to try to cheer you up, and our sense of humor will help us in this endeavor, although the phrase gallows humor has never seemed so logical and appropriate. The external circumstances are exactly in our favor. We need only to take a look at the barbed wire fences, so high and full of electricity. Just like your expectations.And then there are the watchtowers that monitor our every move. The guards have machine guns. But machine guns won’t intimidate us, comrades. They just have barrels of guns, whereas we are going to have barrels of laughs.You may be surprised at how upbeat and cheerful we are. Well, comrades, there are goods reasons for this. It’s been a long time since we were in Berlin. But every time we appeared there, we felt very uneasy. We were afraid we’d get sent to the concentration camps. Now that fear is gone. We’re already here.
Rudolph Herzog
But as they grew closer and closer, Sophie had opened Agatha's wings to a love so strong she thought it would last forever. It was she and Sophie against the world. But on that first day of school, watching Sophie with a prince, Agatha realized how blind she'd been. The bond between two girls, no matter how fierce or loyal, changed once a boy came between them.
Soman Chainani
Maybe my dissertation really had been as brilliant as he claimed, the truth was I remember almost nothing about it; the intellectual leaps I made when I was young were a distant memory to me, and now I was surrounded by a kind of aura, when really my only goal in life was to do a little reading and get in bed at four in the afternoon with a carton of cigarettes and a bottle; and yet, at the same time, I had to admit, I was going to die if I kept that up – I was going to die fast, unhappy and alone. And did I really want to die fast, unhappy and alone? In the end, only kind of.
Michel Houellebecq
Humor is just another defense against theuniverse.
Mel Brooks
Envy yearns to find flaws.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Try evolving as much as you cry.
Darnell Lamont Walker
If it weren’t for her setting me free, I may still be a caged bird today, holding my own daughter captive on a shit-laden perch.
Raquel Cepeda
Creativity and expression of one’s art can only be measured by the audience to whom it was intended for.  Not everyone is going to like my “art” and I don’t really care about that.
Anne-Rae Vasquez
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
Jean Cocteau
With the pride of the artist you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.
Norman Mailer
More than anything, this place feels familiar. I bury my hands in the hot sand and think about the embodiment of memory or, more specifically, our natural ability to carry the past in our bodies and minds. Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. I quietly thank this ancestor of mine for surviving the trip so that I could one day return.
Raquel Cepeda
One sits down first one thinks afterwards.
Jean Cocteau
A diplomat these days is nothing but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally.
Peter Ustinov
Why does a woman work ten years to change a man, then complain he's not the man she married?
Barbra Streisand
Undeniable chemistry and horrific timing. They love each other.
Darnell Lamont Walker
We hovered above the moment like two rain clouds
Tiffanie DeBartolo
JESUS Woke up in a white veilThe fog sets the silence in my handsI think back to my thoughtsAbout the peopleI'm thinkingWith increasing pain in my headPeople who have condemned meDark hourinthe hoursAnd I would now complain quietlyBut there is no furyAnd there is no sadnessThe time has melted away like water in the seaTearsofthe womenThey are covered with cloudsLet my heart bleed to deathAmong the thornsatlastThere is no sun in the zenith
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
In any case, this was a deep human prejudice. Human beings to find a central command in any organization. States had governments. Corporations had CEOs. Schools had principals. Armies had generals. Human beings tended to believe that without central command, chaos would overwhelm the organization and nothing significant could be accomplished.
Michael Crichton
They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We're the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.
Sherman Alexie
When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home.
Ryū Murakami
It's the problem with fairy tales. From far away, they seem so perfect. But up close, they're just as complicated as real life.
Soman Chainani
To tell the truth, girls are no longer the way they used to be. They play gangsters, nowadays, just like boys. They organize rackets. They plan holdups and practice karate. They will rape defenseless adolescents. They wear pants... Life has become impossible.
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Kids can and will thrive in the right conditions, but it all seems to start with the teachers, and giving those teachers the resources to teach- and not just to test.
Morgan Spurlock
All you have control ove is this moment. Chase it.
Anna Akana
Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep but it's not so badI don't worry and I don't weep. In fact I'm glad.Because I get up off my pillow and I flip on the light.I get down and get hip in the still of the night I stretch and I yawn and then I breathe real deep And dance myself to sleep.I hoof around my beddie just a-tappin' my toes Before I know what's happened I'm a-ready to doze Got some partners I can count the boogie-woogie sheepI dance myself to sleep.
Jim Henson
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion on the other hand produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
Jean Cocteau
Developing a genius mindset essentially comes down to two things: operating at speed and using the subconscious mind more than the conscious. This intuitive or relaxed approach to study is the polar opposite of traditional and mainstream forms of education.
James Morcan
The historian Meike Wöhlert has analyzed and compared the judgments rendered by courts responsible for malicious acts of treason in five cities. Although her research only deals with registered cases and not unofficial ones, the results suggest that the telling of political jokes was a mass phenomenon beyond state control. In 61 percent of official cases, joke-tellers were let off with a warning, alcohol consumption often being cited as an extenuating circumstance. (People who had had one too many in bars were considered only partially responsible for their actions, and because most of the popular jokes that made it to court had been told in bars, the verdicts were accordingly lenient.)
Rudolph Herzog
The passion I feel for you is more than you’re prepared for. - Eric
Kailin Gow
If everyone could feel as I felt at that moment, dressed in my preppy sweater and McGregor coat and about to set out on a little journey with my Bambi-eyed girlfriend on Christmas Eve, all conflicts in the world would vanish. Mellow smiles would rule the earth.
Ryū Murakami
We are only as noble as our actions prove us to be.
Kathryn Lasky
Hip-hop...has been the proverbial key that’s opened the door for me to roam this breathtaking planet.
Raquel Cepeda
Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint.
Sherman Alexie
A page of a book is like a human face. Look at a page by Hemingway and compare it with Sterne and Marcel Proust. They are different typographical beings. But force upon them those ragged edges, and the influence of the author’s style on the physical aspect of the page, their typographical physiognomy will disappear. No, unjustified setting is a sort of gleichschaltung [enforced conformity] through diversity, a very phoney diversity. Produced methodically by chance. For the comfort of the keyboard, and not for the comfort of the eye.
Stefan Themerson
Like a good Indian, he knew when to talk and when to remain silent. Like a good Indian, he knew there was never a good time to talk.
Sherman Alexie
Someday we'll find it the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me
Jim Henson
What was a prisoner of war anyway? Less than a man, just material to be used to make the railway, like the teak sleepers and steel rails and dog spikes.
Richard Flanagan
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, and then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this. But while grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. Once a man has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bear his truth in mind.
Rati Tsiteladze
Friendships are nice. So is competence.
Michael Crichton
To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism.
G. Edward Griffin
He was a shadow of the man that once intimidated us out of our home, a shell of a human being, a fragment of a father.
David Louden
[Bill] Clinton was a pretty good president for a Republican.
Michael Moore
The things that come to us easily, our propensities, are carried on a deep subconscious level into our next life. There are no coincidences.
Raquel Cepeda
I couldn't believe it.Something wasn't right.I thought, "Batman smokes cigarettes."I couldn't believe it. "Batman smokes fucking cigarettes."I walked away and saw that Batman was just this stupid guy dressed up in a rubber suit, just as afraid as I was, and that I lived in a lost place inside my own heart, where even Batman couldn't help me.
Scott McClanahan
This kid was writing saying that they were breaking down some of the racial lines in their towns and communities, because their break dance crews were mixed race, and they didn’t give a fuck. They didn’t care what the Klu Klux Klan said.”- Michael Holman (screenwriter, Basquiat)from nthWORD Issue #8, coming soon...
Michael Holman
THE THING WAS AN EXPERT IN HORROR, BUT THIS HUMAN HORROR INDEED EXCEEDED ANY OTHER POSSIBLE FATE. NOT ONLY BECAUSE IT WAS WITHOUT MERCY, BUT BECAUSE IT WAS ACTED UPON RATIONALLY AND WITHOUT COMPULSION. IT WAS A CHOICE. THE KILLING WAS UNRELATED TO THE LARGE WAR, AND IT SERVED NO OTHER PURPOSE THEN EVIL. MEN CHOSE TO DO THIS TO OTHER MEN AND INVENTED REASONS AND PLACES AND MYTHS IN ORDER TO SATISFY THEIR DESIRE IN A LOGICAL AND METHODICAL WAY.
Guillermo del Toro
What courage basically comes down to as human beings is to protect the lives of others, to go out of your way to save others.” “When a baby comes out of its mother and it moves and breathes and it’s alive, you have to do the courageous . . . you have to do the right thing,” Cameron said. “You have to protect it.
Ann McElhinney
Looking at Loh’s photographs, it is obvious that there is nothing simpler and richer than a face when stripped of all effects and affects, poses and postures, stances and pretences. The Singaporeans featured here are almostexpressionless, as if the photographer wanted to leave us clueless about them. What do their faces tell us? Why are they so familiar? Why do we feel we know this auntie that we don’t know? And this guy with the nondescript look? And this girl with no distinguishing mark? Have we met before?
Raphael Millet
The Sun is such a lonely star. Whenever he comes out to see his friends, they all disappear.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
My heart is your home.
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann