Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 160

If one could only discover the unwritten bases of black magic and apply formulae to them, we would find that they were merely another form of science... perhaps less advance, perhaps more.
Charles Beaumont
The trouble with living alone, she had discovered-and the reason why most people she knew didn't like to be alone even for a little while-was that the longer you lived alone, the louder the voices on the right side of your brain got.
Stephen King
We can all be clockmakers, or astronomers. But if we all wanted to be Pushkin. . .if the question is, how do you make a poem by Pushkin?- or, what exactly makes one poem or painting or piece of music greater than another?- or, what is beauty?, or liberty?, or virtue?- if the question is, how should we live?. . . then, reason gives no answer or different answers. So something went wrong. The divine spark in man is not reason after all, but something else, some kind of intuition or vision, perhaps like the moment of inspiration experienced by the artist . . .
Tom Stoppard
Three turns should do it.
J.K. Rowling
It's a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.
Ben Aaronovitch
He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.
Ian McEwan
I’m a doer.I do.So. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. When I say I’m going to do something, I really do it. I throw myself into it and I do. I do my ass off. I do right up to the finish line. No matter what.No.Matter.What.
Shonda Rhimes
All the happiness of man stems from one thing only: that he is incapable of staying quietly in his room.
Paul Auster
Michael: There's nothing here to fear.Lucifer: Well, there's always the truth.
Mike Carey
It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over the controls of a classic arcade game. It was the sort of surreal image you'd expect to see on the cover of an old issue of Heavy Metal or Dragon magazine.
Ernest Cline
Blood calls to blood.
George R.R. Martin
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed. Not surprising, considering the sheer amount of traffic a woman’s body experiences. Tampons and speculums. Cocks, fingers, vibrators and more, between the legs, from behind, in the mouth. Men love to put things inside women, don’t they?
Gillian Flynn
Words save our lives, sometimes.
Neil Gaiman
Ah'm thinking about shoutin 'stop' but ah could never turn away at this point. If smack is as addictive as they say, then ah'm already aw the junky ah'm ever gaunny be.
Irvine Welsh
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
Hugh Wilson
I had once repeated the experiment to reassure myself that this was so, and it was. Ashes to ashes; starch to sugar. A little window into the Creation
Alan Bradley
I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Peter Jackson
If anyone stops us, as long as we mumble something pretentious about the glory of death, we should be fine.
Derek Landy
I could feel the weight of everything then --- the weight of loneliness, of everything that had gone wrong. I felt heroic, going up those last few flights to the top of the building, dragging that weight along with me. Jumping felt like the only way to get rid of it, the only way to make it work for me instead of against me; I felt so heavy that I knew I'd hit the street in no time. I'd beat the world record for falling off a tower block.
Nick Hornby
It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book. Also, when I write letters, I spend the next two days thinking about what I figured out in my letters.
Stephen Chbosky
The other houses in the neighborhood had Christmas lights up and trees visible in their windows, but not Shae's. She and I were the only ones who didn't care anymore, and I liked that about her.
Teresa Lo
We know we are all tarnished, so we doubt everyone else too. It is sad situation, where we need a leader but cannot really trust anyone.
Chetan Bhagat
Why do you live?Because I have something worth living for.
J.K. Rowling
Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That's what it was like for me. I didn't plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if oyu planned on fallin gin love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it.
Nicholas Sparks
Especially difficult when the first and best unconscious move of a dedicated liar is to persuade himself he's sincere. And once he's sincere, all deception vanishes.
Ian McEwan
He will only do the wrong thing when it's the right thing to do..
Neal Shusterman
I'm waiting for her to say "Craig, what you need to do is X" and for the Shift to occur. I want there to be a Shift so bad. I want to feel my brain slide back into the slot it was meant to be in, rest there the way it did before the fall of last year, back when I was young, and witty, and my teachers said I had incredible promise, and I had incredible promise, and I spoke up in class because I was excited and smart about the world. I want the Shift so bad. I'm waiting for the phrase that will invoke it. It'll be like a miracle within my life. But is Dr. Minerva a miracle worker? No. She's a thin, tan lady from Greece with red lipstick.
Ned Vizzini
...Chief without soldiers is just a very lonely man in a big bloody field
Joe Abercrombie
I don't really like driving in the snow. There's something about the motion of the falling snowflakes that hurts my eyes, throws my sense of balance all to hell. It's like tumbling into a field of stars.
Neil Gaiman
Memory is imagined; it is not real. Don't be ashamed of its need to create; it is the loveliest part of your heart. Myth is the true history. Don't let them tell you that there are no monsters. Don't let them make you feel stupid, just because you are happy to play down in the dark with your flashlight. The mystical world depends on you and your tolerance for the absurd. Be strong, my darling ones, and believe!
Nick Cave
Two or three years from now thirty won't look so senile.
Warner Fabian
Wow, we're identical!
J.K. Rowling
The world is what you make of it, friend. If it doesn't fit, you make alterations.
Lawrence Kasdan
You gonna do somethin'? Or are you just gonna stand there and bleed?
Kevin Jarre
There came a time when you realised that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.
Stephen King
To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.
Roger Ebert
I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. That wasn't a happy thought, so the dementors couldn't suck it out of me...but it kept me sane and knowing who I am...helped me keep my powers...
J.K. Rowling
You probably drink too much. If you hand me that bottle, I'll reduce your temptations. --Augustus "Gus" McCrae
Larry McMurtry
Let us await what will surley come without fear of unforseen concequences
Kirsten Beyer
Writing takes a pen, a sheet of paper and, to start with, just the shadow of an idea.
Françoise Sagan
(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the "Arts and Lit non-fiction section)I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.
Nick Hornby
It's much easier not to know things sometimes.
Stephen Chbosky
Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. So now you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life.
Ray Bradbury
I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
Raymond Chandler
I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers and they are going to make a game out of it.
Woody Allen
It's like he has emotional amnesia... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin." Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now.
Emma Forrest
Good always has a price, Marcus. Evil comes free.
Donato Carrisi
As they spoke, the only thing I could think about was that scene from Julius Caesar where Brutus stabs him in the back. Et tu, Eric?
Nicholas Sparks
Go Ahead, call me all the names you want," Sansa said airily. "You won't dare when I'm married to Joffrey. You'll have to bow and call me Your Grace." She shrieked as Arya flung the orange across the table. It caught her in the middle of the forehead with a wet squish and plopped down into her lap."You have juice on your face, Your Grace ," Arya said.
George R.R. Martin
To you, I'm an atheist.To God, I'm the loyal opposition.
Woody Allen
There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.
Tom Stoppard
When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours.
Sidney Sheldon
The point is, if we find out you’ve been horrible to Harry —”“— and make no mistake, we’ll hear about it.“even if you won’t let Harry use the fellytone
J.K. Rowling
A man is always right to pursue the thing he loves.No matter even if it kills him?I think so. Yes. No matter what.
Cormac McCarthy
Wawashkeshthese apples arefor you,red on the whitesnow,their cider tangwill find youin the gray woods.There is a storyhow a snakeoffered an apple,so sweet, so cold,those bite wassorrow.--excerpt from Eric Gadzinski's poem "Wawashkeshgiwis" from The Way North
Ron Riekki
The song just started again, and now I sang it, too. "These strong hands belong to you..." I found a place between two men. The first was about my age, maybe a little younger, with high cheekbones and small eyes. The other was middle-aged, with a wide forehead and bulb nose, and beside him was a man with a striking face, a square, dimpled chin and high cheekbones... and then there was another, and another--all the kinds of faces in all the colors the world calls black: brown and tan and yellow and orange, copper and bronze and gold. "These strong hands belong to you..." They sang--we sang--with no enthusiasm or joy. We used to sing at Bell's, crossing the yard or working on the pile, just like slaves used to sing in Old Slavery, spirituals and work songs, sly lyrics, silly lyrics, yearning for freedom or roasting Massa in nonsense words he couldn't understand. This, though--this was a different kind of singing. I looked from man to man, and they were singing mechanically, eyes front, mouths moving like puppets. Singing this dumb refrain about how much they loved their bosses and loved their work.Nothing spiritual about this. This was something else altogether.
Ben H. Winters
You've presented a reality that not everyone has chosen to accept.
Daniel Waters
Perhaps it was an afterimage, I decided, or a ghost: something that had stirred in my mind, for a moment, so powerfully that I believed it to be real, but now was gone, and faded into the past like a memory forgotten, or a shadow into the dusk.
Neil Gaiman
It’s you and me that matters to me and you.
George R.R. Martin
Do you want it bad enough to get over being hurt?
Richard Castle