Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 124

She treats herself as if she is a divine worm born of sand and stone.
Chuck Wendig
Fat men take a cushion with them wherever they go.
George R.R. Martin
When I was a boy, Ray Bradbury picked stories from his books of short stories he thought younger readers might like and published them as R Is for Rocket and S Is for Space. Now I was doing the same sort of thing, and I asked Ray if he'd mind if I called this book M Is for Magic. (He didn't.)M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises...
Neil Gaiman
We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?
Robert Ardrey
History is made not simply with events, but by remembering those events, a double drumbeat like a heartbeat. History can be written not only with books but with ceremonies. Yet a real event read about in a newspaper is not always more important than a fictional one in a novel or play or poem.
Christopher Bram
This was when he first suspected that the kindly child-loving God extolled by his headmistress might not exist. As it turned out, most major world events suggested the same. But for Theo’s sincerely godless generation, the question hasn’t come up. No one in his bright, plate-glass, forward-looking school ever asked him to pray, or sing an impenetrable cheery hymn. There’s no entity for him to doubt. His initiation, in front of the TV, before the dissolving towers, was intense but he adapted quickly. These days he scans the papers for fresh developments the way he might a listings magazine. As long as there’s nothing new, his mind is free. International terror, security cordons, preparations for war — these represent the steady state, the weather. Emerging into adult consciousness, this is the world he finds.
Ian McEwan
We have teeth and we have tailsWe have tails we have eyesWe were here before you fellWe will be here when you rise.
Neil Gaiman
YOUR BOREDOM IS YOUR PROBLEM," said Owen Meany. "IT'S YOUR LACK OF IMAGINATION THAT BORES YOU. HARDY HAS THE WORLD FIGURED OUT. TESS IS DOOMED. FATE HAS IT IN FOR HER. SHE'S A VICTIM; IF YOU'RE A VICTIM, THE WORLD WILL USE YOU. WHY SHOULD SOMEONE WHO'S GOT SUCH A WORKED-OUT WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD BORE YOU? WHY SHOULDN'T YOU BE INTERESTED IN SOMEONE WHO'S WORKED OUT A WAY TO SEE THE WORLD? THAT'S WHAT MAKES WRITERS INTERESTING!
John Irving
Bread and water will not break me, and if you choose to isolate me, I shall have only but more time to plot against my oppressors.
J.V. Hart
If you dont like my book write your own.
Rita Mae Brown
History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.
George R.R. Martin
I craved a form of naive realism. I paid special attention, I craned my readerly neck whenever a London street I knew was mentioned, or a style of frock, a real public person, even a make of car. Then, I thought, I had a measure, I could guage the quality of the writing by its accuracy, by the extent to which it aligned with my own impressions, or improved upon them. I was fortunate that most English writing of the time was in the form of undemanding social documentary. I wasn't impressed by those writers (they were spread between South and North America) who infiltrated their own pages as part of the cast, determined to remind poor reader that all the characters and even they themselves were pure inventions and the there was a difference between fiction and life. Or, to the contrary, to insist that life was a fiction anyway. Only writers, I thought, were ever in danger of confusing the two.
Ian McEwan
You're the one who is weak. You will never know love or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.
J.K. Rowling
Fat Charlie went back to his hotel room, the colour of underwater, where his lime sat, like a small green Buddha, on the countertop."You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.
Neil Gaiman
You can like an immoral character because she’s interesting, not because you want to have her over for dinner.
Gillian Flynn
Beauty can be treacherous.
George R.R. Martin
To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs.
Tom Rob Smith
First think of the person who lives in disguise,Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,The middle of middle and the end of end?And finally give me the sound often heardDuring the search for a hard-to-find word.Now string them together, and answer me this,Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?
J.K. Rowling
If after reading this book you come to my home and brutally murder me, I do not blame you.
Jesse Andrews
Though neither happiness nor respect are worth anything, because unless both are coming from the truest motives, they are simply deceits. A successful man earns the respect of the world never mind what is the state of his mind, or his manner of earning. So what is the good of such respect, and how happy will such a man be in himself? And if he is what passes for happy, such a state is lower than the self-content of the meanest animal.
Richard Llewellyn
You need to take out the stuff that’s just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler!
Stephen King
Think of the billions of trillions of snowflakes, and the billions of trillions of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in every single one of them. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, who wrote the laws for the wind and the rain, the snow and the dew? I’ve tried to work it out, but it makes my head spin.
Alan Bradley
The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way.Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.
Robert Bresson
His story is simple, because simple is always best.
Stephen King
Harry, don't go picking a row with Malfoy, don't forget, he's a prefect now, he could make life difficult for you...""Wow, I wonder what it'd be like to have a difficult life?" said Harry sarcastically.
J.K. Rowling
Certain directors and actors were constantly preoccupied by one problem, and apparently, one only. This was connected with the so-called German greeting, which was the method of hailing a friend by raising the right arm straight out with the hand extended at, or slightly above, the level of the shoulder. This greeting had very definite political implications; it was employed daily by millions; and the directors and actors saw no reason why it should not be one on the films in a simple and life-like fashion. They failed. Even when shown in the rushes the effect on the select and professional audience was simply to produce uncontrollable hilarity. The cinema can do a great deal. It can entrance, t can tell fairy tales, it can be realistic or surrealistic -- but it cannot portray a gesture that is false without underlining the most brutal way its basic falseness. The German cinema could not reproduce the German greeting; it was the greeting that was to blame, not the cinema.
Ernst von Salomon
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
Maybe he sells fear because he's got nothing else to sell.
Stephen King
The world is full of all sorts of brilliant stuff and I haven't found out all about it yet, so I don't want anyone messing it about or endin' it before I've had the chance to find out about it.-Adam to DEATH & the 4 horsepeople of the Apocalypse
Neil Gaiman
Not that he wanted to say that. It would make it sound as if he wanted to blame her..Women were very complicated creatures. He suddenly realised he was running through his head a list of everything he considered preferable to women. It was a long and most impressive imaginary document.
Peter David
My soul is wrapped in harsh repose,Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes,But soft... behold!A sunlight beamButting a swath of glimmering gleam.My heart expands,'tis grown a bulge in it,Inspired by your beauty...Effulgent.
Joss Whedon
We accept the love we think we deserve.
Stephen Chbosky
What sort of gods make rats and plagues and dwarfs?
George R.R. Martin
And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.
Nicholas Sparks
What is the difference between freedom and hedonism? Between freedom and insanity?
Karen Essex
In fact we put so many things in our mouths we constantly have to be reminded what not to eat. Look at that little package of silicon gel that's inside your sneakers. It says DO NOT EAT for a reason. Somewhere sometime some genius bought a pair of sneakers and said Ooooh look. They give you free mints with the shoes
Morgan Spurlock
Socrates is flying. No, he is soaring. The wings behind him beat in a calming rhythm while the cool air rushes past. His wings are all that matter, snapping at the rushing wind like the sails of some great sea vessel, the feathery appendages all he is and all he will ever want to be.His back muscles flex with the effort that takes him high above the ground. He feels the effort, of course, but sweeping into the sky does not require much of one. The sensation is pleasurable, even exhilarating. With flight there is freedom beyond description, an ecstasy bordering on sexual.He has only one destination, and that is to soar higher, to no longer be a prisoner of the earth. Here destinations seem irrelevant, the world below small. Flying exceeds every pleasure he knows. In the immense forever of blue sky, all that matters is flight and his ability to climb higher.Up and up and up...
Kenneth C. Goldman
One of the dwarfs walked in front of Thor to get a better view of the prye, and Thor kicked him irritably into the middle of the flames, which made Thor feel slightly better and made all the dwarfs feel much worse.
Neil Gaiman
Then we talked a lot about our parents and how we didn't want to become them, but we had no other role models--or "maps," Alex kept saying. "My father is a terrible map, mostly because he doesn't ever lead me anywhere." And I thought about my parents being maps that led to places I didn't want to go-- and it made a shocking amount of sense, using the word maps to describe parents. If almost made you feel like you could fold Mom and Dad up and lock them away in the glove compartment of your car and just joyride for the rest of your life maybe.
Matthew Quick
take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin miles off the pace
Irvine Welsh
A tissue of small sounds filled the room, a bird, a clock, a voice from another garden. What we call silence.
Patrick McGrath
The writer is editor, marketer, blogger, reader, thinker, designer, publisher, public speaker, budget-maker, contract reader, trouble-shooter, coffee-hound, liver-pickler, shame-farmer, god, devil, gibbering protozoa.
Chuck Wendig
She won’t love again in the same unbridled way; she’ll never feel the sharp brightness of her own personality when he gazes upon her, when he draws a spotlight over her and she responds, fully illuminated.
Katie Khan
As we write we summon little demons.
Neil Gaiman
Pain is the biggest power of love." That's what Wireman says.
Stephen King
Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.
Stephen King
When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.
Neil Gaiman
Never get out of bed, never go to the window, and never look behind the curtain.
Roald Dahl
I like games of chance, including women.
Raymond Chandler
Are you?" I said. "Gay, I mean?" -I hoped he wasn't offended by my asking, but after everything that had happened, I really wanted to know."No," he said. "I thought I was for about a w-w-week once. But now I know I'm not."If there was ever an answer that sounded like the truth, that was it.
Brent Hartinger
Especially as I was an old friend, or at least I was a person she had known for a long time, which after a certain point is almost the same thing...
Julian Fellowes
He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough.
Ray Bradbury
He restrained himself from another wisecrack, infinitesimally but with great effort attempting to close down his nightclub approach to education; every positive change in his life, every minute increment in character, acquired more or less through shame.
Richard Price
Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain. ... Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.
Richard Matheson
And because people are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes, they will say it is because this is a girl with beauty and grace and charm.
Patrick Süskind
We’re all photojournalists now. It’s no longer enough just to write.
David Cronenberg
I don’t have the heart to tell my sons that the older one gets, the less funny literature becomes—and they would refuse to believe me if I tried to explain that some people don’t think jokes even belong in proper books. I won’t bother breaking the news that, if they remain readers, they will insist on depressing themselves for about a decade of their lives, in a concerted search of gravitas through literature.
Nick Hornby
It is best to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.
Lillian Hellman
I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.
Eric Roth
...How would you like to die, Tyrion son of Tywin?""In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a maiden's mouth around my cock, at the age of eighty," he replied.
George R.R. Martin