Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 142

As far as God goes, I _am_ a nonbeliever. Still am. But when it comes to a devil---well, that's something else.
William Peter Blatty
Novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming clutter Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five...
Richard Russo
I hope for what I always hope for as a writer: a critical but kind reader. I think that is what we all hope for.
Christos Tsiolkas
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
John Irving
For our Hogwarts is in danger from external, deadly foesAnd we must unite inside her or we'll crumble from within
J.K. Rowling
What you love, you must love all the harder because someday it will be gone.
Stephen King
Kuamini (mbali na imani, ambayo ni nia ya kujua kisichoweza kujulikana) ni kwa ajili ya vitu usivyoweza kuvielezea. Unaamini kwamba siku moja dawa ya UKIMWI au saratani itapatikana mahali fulani, ilhali huwezi kufanya majaribio ya kisayansi kulithibitisha hilo. Unaweza kusubiri hata miaka mia, lakini kama bado dawa haijapatikana, unaweza kusubiri hata miaka mingine mia. Kuamini ni kujifanya kujua (na mara nyingi kujifanya kujua ni uongo) na kuamini hakuhitaji maarifa. Kujua kunahitaji maarifa na ni kuamini unakoweza kukuthibitisha. Ukiniuliza kama simu yangu ipo mfukoni nitakwambia ndiyo ipo, kwa sababu nitaingiza mkono mfukoni na kuitoa na kuiona. Siamini kama ipo mfukoni, najua.
Enock Maregesi
As Christians, we're supposed to be the salt of the earth, not the filler.
Brian Reynolds
And though she didn’t know it then, whenever her thoughts drifted back toward the past, she would always remember that this was how it all began.
Nicholas Sparks
It was summer and moonlight and we had lemonade to drink, and we held the cold glasses in our hands, and Dad read the stereo-newspapers inserted into the special hat you put on your head and which turned the microscopic page in front of the magnifying lens if you blinked three times in succession.
Ray Bradbury
I felt the kind of peace you feel when you come in from a hot afternoon and pour cold water over your feet.
Sachin Kundalkar
If you're gonna be a failure at least be one at something you enjoy.
Sylvester Stallone
He had been (Thinking? Praying?) It was all the same thing.
Stephen King
Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention aand innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared. Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
J.K. Rowling
Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
Mae West
A hundred times I must have thought of ways to take it back, but I wasn't smart enough to understand that an apology is a sign of strenght, not weakness (...)
Terry Hayes
Who wants a library full of books you've already read?
Harlan Ellison
I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.
Joe Abercrombie
You must realize...that the men of the Valley have built their houses and brought up their families without help from others, without a word from the Government. Their lives have been ordered from birth by the Bible. From it they took their instructions. They had no other guidance, and no other law. If it has produced hypocrites and pharisees, the fault is in the human race. We are not all angels. Our fathers upheld good conduct and rightful dealing by strictness, but it is in Man Adam to be slippery, and many are as slimy as the adder. The wonder is to me that the men of the Valley are as they are, and not barbarians at all.I was sorry for Meillyn Lewis, too. But that session of the deacons was helpful as a preventative. It was cruel, but it is more cruel to allow misconduct to flourish without check.
Richard Llewellyn
I realize the thing about a guy you've spent your whole life loving from afar is that even though he's real you've really made most of him up.
Kirsten Smith
It's okay to fail. It does not make you forever a failure. In fact, there are no failures really. Only human beings doing the best they can.
Christy Hall
A double bed can seem awfully small if your'e sharing it with someone you don't love." -Misia
Chris Greenhalgh
BERNARD. (To DONALD.) Donald, read any new libraries lately?DONALD. One or three. I did the complete works of Doris Lessing this week. I've been depressed.[. . .]BERNARD. Some people eat, some people drink, and some take dope.DONALD. I read.MICHAEL. And read and read and read. It's a wonder your eyes don't turn back in your head at the sight of a book jacket.HANK. Well, at least he's a constructive escapist.
Mart Crowley
There are many other little refinements too, Mr. Bohlen. You'll see them all when you study the plans carefully. For example, there's a trick that nearly every writer uses, of inserting at least one long, obscure word into each story. This makes the reader think that the man is very wise and clever. So I have the machine do the same thing. There'll be a whole stack of long words stored away just for this purpose."Where?"In the 'word-memory' section," he said, epexegetically.
Roald Dahl
She's too sad to be beautiful. No one that sad can still be beautiful.
Paul Auster
The worst choice you can make, is no choice at all
Nicholas Stoller
Every lover is, in his heart, a madman, and, in his head, a minstrel.
Neil Gaiman
I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.
Roger Ebert
In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I've thought a great deal about my life and my country. I think there is little that can be truly known. My family has been fortunate. Others were less so. As they are often quick to point out.
Cormac McCarthy
It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
Tom Stoppard
Though I’m tempted by the call of the sea, I resist. It can’t claim me.In a way I’m stronger than the waves and I feel good about that.
Darren Shan
He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark.
J.K. Rowling
How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?"If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?"Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. "Touché. He is readable, I'll give him that - tells a good story...
Stephen King
Mistletoe," said Luna dreamily, pointing at a large clump of white berries placed almost over Harry's head. He jumped out from under it. "Good thinking," said Luna seriously. "It's often infested with nargles.
J.K. Rowling
Eli snorted, her eyes narrowed.— Because I am like you.— What do you mean like me? I..Eli thrust her hand through the air as if she was holding a knife, said:— What are you looking at, idiot? Want to die, or something? — Stabbed the air with empty hand. — That what happens if you look at me.Oskar rubbed his lips together, dampening them.— What are you saying?— It's not me that's saying it. It's you. That was the first thing I heard you say. Down on the playground.Oskar remembered. The tree. The knife. How he had held up the blade of the knife like a mirror, seen Eli for the first time.
John Ajvide Lindqvist
The long game was ended, the Snitch has been caught, it was time to leave the air....
J.K. Rowling
Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal.
Peter S Beagle
But I don’t think I’ve ever known such a natural at Potions!” said Slughorn. “Instinctive, you know — like his mother! I’ve only ever taught a few with this kind of ability, I can tell you that, Sybill — why even Severus —”And to Harry’s horror, Slughorn threw out an arm and seemed to scoop Snape out of thin air toward them.
J.K. Rowling
She was alone.She missed him immediately.
Sue Townsend
I swear, talking to you is like talking to a really good-looking and mildly stupid brick wall.
Derek Landy
I didn't have a catharsis for my childhood pain, most of us don't, and until I learned how to forgive those people and let it go, I was unhappy.
Tyler Perry
I love you now for what we've already shared, and I love you now in anticipation of all that's to come.
Nicholas Sparks
Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.
Raymond Chandler
Yeah, but what if you went back and killed your own grandfather?"He stared at me, baffled. "Why the fuck would you do that?
Stephen King
Is it safe?
William Goldman
I have no fear of the dead. Indeed in my own limited experience I have found them to produce in me a feeling that is quite the opposite of fear. A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories. I’d had the good fortune of seeing several of them in my time.
Alan Bradley
Delirium: You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Do you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head? Dream: Well, I use it to refer that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control or influence. In my case, the realm and action of dreaming. Delirium: Hump. It's more than that. The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning--ZAP! Well for ages after people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. THAT'S responsibility.
Neil Gaiman
A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.
Joe Abercrombie
But Vivien wasn't being given the chance to sow her wild oats. Speaking from a point of authority, it's best to get that shit out of the way when you are young.
Lisa Lutz
I had no jealousy of work, no jealousy of money. I was just jealous of women who took advantage of men, because I didn't know how to do it.
Nora Ephron
Longbottom, if brains were gold, you'd be poorer than Weasley, and that's saying something.
J.K. Rowling
At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watchful for his own name. He saw it as if in bold. It could leap out at him from an unread double page of small print, and sometimes he could sense it coming before the page turn.
Ian McEwan
A man grows weary of having no lovers but his fingers.
George R.R. Martin
Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug.
Stephen King
She loves dogs. And in time, who knows, maybe she would even have ended up loving the type of dogs who eat other small dogs for lunch.-- Leslie McNeill
Richard Finney
Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy.
Stephen King
You are either born a writer or you are not.
Cormac McCarthy
Are you in pain?' I asked, because I know that everything in the world that matters shows up as some kind of pain. Or pang. Joy included.
Andrea Seigel
When Annie's treatin, you best be eatin.
Stephen King
To grant all a man's wishes is to take away his dreams and ambitions. Life is only worth living if you have something to strive for. To aim at.
P.B. Kerr