Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 112

It's a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you are lying on your death bead, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes.

Albus Severus," Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to Rose, who was now on the train, "you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.

Larry: She doesn't want to be happy.Dan: Everybody wants to be happy.Larry: Depressives don't. They want to be unhappy to confirm they're depressed. If they were happy they couldn't be depressed anymore. They'd have to go out into the world and live. Which can be depressing.

The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.

...he had to comfort himself with the firm conviction that most of what he objected to in Mohawk and the world at large was not the result of people reading the wrong books, but rather of not reading any at all.

You must remember that there was virtually no air travel in the early 1930s. Africa was two weeks away from England by boat and it took you about five weeks to get to China. These were distant and magic lands and nobody went to them just for a holiday. You went there to work. Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours and nothing is fabulous anymore.

Uncle Vernon’s face worked furiously. The idea of being taught consideration by a man who had just blasted away half his living-room wall seemed to be causing him intense suffering.

I watched him even then as he fell, his face undefeated, his eyes still proud

Jemma Simmons- I like to think about the first law of thermodynamics, that no energy in the universe is created...Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz- And none is destroyedJemma Simmons- That means that every bit of energy inside us, every particle, will go on to be a part of something else. Maybe live as a dragonfish, a microbe, maybe burn in a supernova ten billion years from now. And every part of us now was once a part of some other thing- a moon, a storm cloud, a mammoth.Leo Fitz- A monkey.Jemma Simmons- A monkey. Thousands and thousands of other beautiful things that were just as terrified to die as we are. We gave them new life. Good one, I hope.

Sometimes your heart can lead you to a dead end.

As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you.

Curiosity is my great vice. I fear you have seen through to the heart of me, and now seek to exploit my weakness

A dream is not needing anything. If it is a good one, it is waiting peaceably for ever until it is released and allowed to do its job. If it is a bad one, it is always fighting to get out.

Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

...I am uncontrollable and dangerous. But of course I do not say this to Jake, mostly because he has never been locked up and doesn't understand what it feels like to lose control, and he only wants to watch the football game now, and none of this means anything to him, because he has never been married and he has never lost someone like Nikki and he is not trying to improve his life at all, because he doesn't ever feel the war that goes on in my chest every single fucking day--the chemical explosions that light up my skull like the Fourth of July and the awful needs and impulses and...

The idea of celibate vampires is ridiculous. To me, vampires are sex. I don't get a vampire story about abstinence. I don't care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.

Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves.

Dear God, teach me to be careless.

I will kill you if you set me free,' the eyes said. 'Set me free.

The more he loved and was loved, the better his life got. At once it seemed to Jack like a magical solution to everything. If only everyone loved everyone else! Then there would be no trouble in the world. It seemed so easy. If we all just reached our hands out to each other, what peaks of human joy could we not achieve!

10 Steps to Becoming a Better WriterWrite.Write more.Write even more.Write even more than that.Write when you don’t want to.Write when you do.Write when you have something to say.Write when you don’t.Write every day.Keep writing.

Because this exact leaf had to grow in that exact way, in that exact place, so that precise wind could tear it from that precise branch and make it fly into this exact face at that exact moment. And, if just one of those tiny little things had never had happened, I'd never have met ya. Which makes this leaf the most important leaf in human history

Deep in her heart, she wasn't sure she deserved to be happy, nor did she believe that she was worthy of someone who seemed...normal.

Good! he wanted to cry out to her. Good! Because you only had to see it! I had to wear it!

Her purity of spirit would never be in doubt, though she moved through a blemished world.

Perhaps jungle life, despite physical danger, was a relaxing one. Surely it was free of the petty grievances, the disparate values of society. It was simple, devoid of artifice and ulcer-burning pressures.

Come on. I know you're not a stupid man.''I'm quite stupid. Ask anyone.''Finbar, are there superheroes living among us?' Finbar snorted with laughter and Kenny started to feel a little thick. 'Superheroes? In tights and capes, flying around? If there were superheroes, Mr. Journalist, don't you think they'd be in New York or somewhere like that? There's not that many tall buildings for Spiderman to swing from in Dublin, you know? He'd have maybe two good swings and then hang there looking disappointed.' 'These people don't wear tights and capes, Finbar.''So they're naked superheroes? That's grand for now, but when the good weather is over they're going to regret it.''They look like us. They dress like us. But they're not like us. They're different.''You,' Finbar said. 'Are sounding very racist right now.

If there is a heaven we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you.

He wanted to say that all this talk of feelings was irrelevant. Thatemotions come and go and can't be controlled, so there's no reason to worry about them. That in the end, people should be judged by their actions, since in the end, it was actions that defined everyone.

there are things some people can never understand.there's no point to telling them.

He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?

The defining lines of reality have always been a bit blurred for me.

This is what happens when an outlaw kidnaps a scholar of myths and legends.

In ten years time I’ll be… (dead) sixty.

And when his head slumped forward into his book, she giggled, for she knew that he was hers.

For God’s sake, Larry, grow up. Develop a little self-righteousness. A lot of that is an ugly thing, God knows, but a little applied over all your scruples is an absolute necessity! It is to the soul what a good sunblock is to the skin during the heat of the summer. You can only captain your own soul, and from time to time some smart-ass psychologist will question your ability to even do that.

Heads up lads!” someone shouted. “Here we go!”More missiles, this time not just bottles, but coins as well. And then from the other side of the cordon, a roar went up. Bellowing across the road toward them. Billy watched as the Manchester lads poured forward, desperately trying to force a way through the massed ranks of the police only to be driven back by batons and gloved fists. Another salvo of bottles came flying across, trying to provoke a reaction. But the West Ham lads merely stood and laughed. They didn’t need to respond. The point had been made, the result earned. Billy was happy. Very happy.

I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)

I'm going to go where my heart takes me, even if it's a messy road.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

Melanie thinks: when your dreams come true, your true has moved. You've already stopped being the person who had the dreams, so it feels more like a weird echo of something that already happened to you a long time ago.

You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.

I believe instinct's the iron skeleton under all our ideas of free will. Unless you're willing to take the pipe or eat the gun or take a long walk off a short dock, you can't say no to some things. You can't refuse to pick up your option because there is no option.

It is time to stop standing at the edges of rooms. Hugging the walls. Living in my head. Wishing I had something to say.

Fat’ is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her.I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I’m not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain…I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!’‘Well,’ I said, slightly nonplussed, ‘the last time you saw me I’d just had a baby.’What I felt like saying was, ‘I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?’ But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!I’ve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don’t want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I’d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before ‘thin’. And frankly, I’d rather they didn’t give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.

Memory is the space in which a thing happens for a second time.

This is an orchestration for an event. For a dance in fact. The participants will be apprised of their roles at the proper time. For now it is enough that they have arrived. As the dance is the thing with which we are concerned and contains complete within itself its own arrangement and history and finale there is no necessity that the dancers contain these things within themselves as well. In any event the history of all is not the history of each nor indeed the sum of those histories and none here can finally comprehend the reason for his presence for he has no way of knowing even in what the event consists. In fact, were he to know he might well absent himself and you can see that that cannot be any part of the plan if plan there be.

The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?

Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in under or over-protectiveness, in a distrust in parental authority which becomes all authority. It can later, with maturity - a flexible concept - be laughed away, dispelled by determined clear thinking. Or it can be encouraged by self-abusive resentment and brooding self-pity. It can grow ever greater until the original authority becomes intolerable, and a change becomes imperative. Not to a radical one in thinking; that would be too troublesome, too painful. The change is simply to authority in another guise which, in time, and under any great stress, must be distrusted and resented even more than the first.

The day might come when I had nothing but memories, and the choice of whether to indulge my romantic side and wallow in them, or my cynical side and reflect on the reliability.

She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above.

Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you?

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.

A day ago, the sight of a man removing his face would have blown thick chunks of Aiden’s mind out the back of his head, but not today. Today Aiden was fresh out of shock and running low on wonder.

Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever…

But the thing about Literature is, well, basically it encapsulates all the disciplines - it's history, philosophy, politics, sexual politics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, science. Literature is mankind's organised response to the world around him, or her.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

For me it's not possible to forget and I don't understand people who when the love is ended can bury the other person in hatred or oblivion. For me a man I have loved becomes a kind of brother.