Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 120

The fear of not living is a deep, abiding dread of watching your own potential decompose into irredeemable disappointment when 'should be' gets crushed by what is.
Neal Shusterman
Dope.They sell that shit to schoolkids.It's worse than that.How's that?Schoolkids buy it.
Cormac McCarthy
I had fallen out of my secure world, precipitated beyond the territories I had only begun to control so skillfully. What a foolish step to take. What an insane move to make.
Francesca Marciano
He was thinking of that time, the way one does on long journeys when rootlessness and boredom, lack of sleep or routine can summon from out of nowhere random stretches of the past, make them as real as a haunting. --Solar
Ian McEwan
Who knows their own story? Certainly it makes no sense when we are living in the midst of it. It's all just clamor and confusion. It only becomes a story when we tell it and retell it. Our small precious recollections that we speak again and again to ourselves and to others, first creating the narrative of our lives and then keeping the story from dissolving into darkness.
Nick Cave
Nothing in life has any business being perfect.
James Goldman
It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things.
Nicholas Sparks
All of a sudden, life became too much to bear. Just like that, for no particular reason. Because there was a child’s corpse in the fridge on rue Parthenais. Because I had to start all over again from scratch, one more time. Because I had rolled my rock to the top of the hill and now it was rolling back down again. The times before, I’d always managed to put on a brave face. But there comes a time when you just don’t feel strong enough to look for another place to live and go shopping again for clothes and dishes and cutlery and scouring pads and toilet paper. This was one of those times. When I got back to the hotel, I asked the Barbie at reception for the key to the minibar. It burned in the palm of my hand. I slapped it back down on the counter and ran out. I had to find a meeting.
Bernard Émond
She's as old as the hills, evil as a snake, all malevolence and magic and death.
Neil Gaiman
The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
Steven Pressfield
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
Gene Roddenberry
Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.
George R.R. Martin
Talent isn't enough. You need motivation-and persistence too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When you're young plain old poverty can be enough along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have to have that feeling of "I'll show them." If you don't have it don't become a writer.
Leon Uris
In Hollywood, no one knows anything.
William Goldman
The best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.
Ruth Gordon
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
Hagrid looked down at his umbrella and scratched his beard. 'Shouldn'ta lost me temper,' he said ruefully, 'but it didn't work anyway. Meant ter turn him into a pig, but I suppose he was so much like a pig anyway there wasn't much left ter do.
J.K. Rowling
One day, everything will be like before again. And it is not like it.
Raymond Chandler
Now, you two – this year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl telling me you've – you've blown up a toilet or –""Blown up a toilet? We've never blown up a toilet.""Great idea though, thanks, Mum.
J.K. Rowling
You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.
Neil Gaiman
I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, Giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy: I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like.
Aaron Sorkin
Yeah 'ear 'ear," said George, with half a glance at Fred, the corner of whose mouth twitched.
J.K. Rowling
It was the look on her face when she said it. And how much she meant it. It suddenly made everything seem like it really was. I felt terrible. Just terrible.
Stephen Chbosky
No. Not yet. A craftsman only. But I dream to be an artist. I pray that someday, if I work with enough care, if I am very very lucky, I will make a weapon that is a work of art. Call me an artist then, and I will answer.
William Goldman
Dumbledore is gone, Harry. He's gone.He will only be gone from the school when none here or loyal to him, said Harry, smiling in spite of himself.
J.K. Rowling
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Mae West
She is off the heart's map and her compass is spinning.
Mark Haddon
He’s gone, Harry told himself. He’s gone. He had to keep thinking it as he washed and dressed, as though repetition would dull the shock of it. He’s gone and he’s not coming back. And that was the simple truth of it, Harry knew, because their protective enchantments meant that it would be impossible, once they vacated this spot, for Ron to find them again.
J.K. Rowling
I do to miss my childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in simple things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not away from things, or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy.
Neil Gaiman
Douglas, you have an incredible capacity for missing the point. Will you listen to me, just for once? The debate does not matter. It's not about the issues. Albie might have been naive or ridiculous or pompous or all of those things, but you apologized. You said you were embarassed by him. You took the side of a bunch of arms-dealers! Bloddy bastard arms-dealers against your son - our son - and that was wrong, it was the wrong thing to do, because in a fight you side with the people you love. That's just how it is.
David Nicholls
They meet in the girls' bathroom. The last time they were forced to meet in a place like this, they took separate, isolated stalls. Now they share one. They hold each other in the tight space, making no excuses for it. There's no time left in their lives for games, or for awkwardness, or for pretending they don't care about each others, and so they kiss as if they've done it forever. As if it is as crucial as the need for oxygen.
Neal Shusterman
It was a hot, moist armpit of a night...
Mike Carey
Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been.
Richard Matheson
WILDE: Oh — Bosie! (He weeps.) I have to go back to him, you know. Robbie will be furious but it can't be helped. The betrayal of one's friends is a bagatelle in the stakes of love, but the betrayal of oneself is a lifelong regret. Bosie is what became of me. He is spoiled, vindictive, utterly selfish and not very talented, but these are merely the facts. The truth is he was Hyacinth when Apollo loved him, he is ivory and gold, from his red rose-leaf lips comes music that fills me with joy, he is the only one who understands me. 'Even as a teething child throbs with ferment, so does the soul of him who gazes upon the boy's beauty; he can neither sleep at night nor keep still by day,' and a lot more besides, but before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented. We would never love anybody if we could see past our invention. Bosie is my creation, my poem. In the mirror of invention, love discovered itself. Then we saw what we had made — the piece of ice in the fist you cannot hold or let go. (He weeps.)
Tom Stoppard
She made me a stranger unto myself, she was all of those calm nights and tall eucalyptus trees, the desert stars, that land and sky, that fog outside, and I had come there with no purpose save to be a mere writer, to get money, to make a name for myself and all that piffle. She was so much finer than I, so much more honest, that I was sick of myself and I could not look at her warm eyes, I suppressed the shiver brought on by her brown arms around my neck and the long fingers in my hair. I did not kiss her. She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed.
John Fante
Words are the bricks of our world and they have the power to change it.
Enock Maregesi
…but I guess you can never wash anything completely away, not from this dark glass of a world, and now I saw them again, a tangle of names overlying one another, and looking at them was like listening to the dead speak and sing and cry out for mercy.
Stephen King
I’m going to eat your fucking eyeballs and wear your faces when I’m done with you!
Jake Bible
Those with the least always lose the most in war.
Joe Abercrombie
The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive
Stanley Kubrick
Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘... Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.
Neil Gaiman
You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.
Irvine Welsh
If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?
Gene Wilder
I found posts about how to slit your wrists the "right way", so you will actually die, and that depressed me, because people actually post stuff like that, and even though I wanted to know the answer, so I could weigh my options, that info maybe shouldn't be on the internet...But really - why do some people post the correct ways to commit suicide on the internet? Do they want weird, sad people like me to go away permanently? Do they think it's a good idea for some people to off themselves? How can you tell when you are one of those people who should slash his wrists the right way with a razor blade? Is there an answer for that too? I Googled but nothing concrete came up. Just ways to complete the mission. Not justification.
Matthew Quick
You just don't know writers. They'll use anything, anybody. They'll eat their young.
Dennis Potter
Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.
Daniel Handler
The only people who attain power are those who crave for it.
Erich Kästner
You're the ruler of the universe. Try to show a little taste!
Ed Wood
All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.
Neil Gaiman
I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
At some point, loneliness become less a condition than a habit. In time, you stop looking at your phone wondering why you can't think of anyone to call, stop getting you hair cut, stop working out, stop thinking that tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. Because tomorrow is today, and today is yerterday, and yesterday beat the shit out of you and brought you to your knees. The only way to stay sane is to stop hoping for something better.
Jonathan Tropper
There is a virtue, I must presume, in shamelessness, since by placing on parade the things one does not know, one discovers that no one else knows either.
Robert Ardrey
You ought to be blowing me kisses, wench.
George R.R. Martin
Before the day there was only endless night. When the stars rained down from the skies, and giants and other unfathomable creatures roamed the land, there was a goddess who ruled over them all because she had been clever enough to figure out the secret of time and how to walk between worlds.
Scarlett Amaris
You mean you live down here?' Matilda asked.'I do', Miss Honey replied, but she said no more.Matilda had never once stopped to think about where Miss Honey might be living. She had always regarded her purely as a teacher, a person who turned up out of nowhere and taught at school and then went away again.
Roald Dahl
She really was pretty, for a grown-up, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative.
Neil Gaiman
The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass......and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night. My God... what have we done?
Neal Shusterman
The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising… and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.
Neil Gaiman
But it was hard to keep his hands still. He could almost feel them twitching emphatically with his strong desire to reach out and stroke the dog's head. He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and the dog was such a beautiful ugly dog.
Richard Matheson
On the nights they went to bed at the same time, Rocco would lie there and watch her go to the closet, watch her choose either silky slips or mannish shirts, like running up sex flags from across the room.
Richard Price