Quotes by Screenwriters - Page 64

You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly... But — you say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar... Ask yourselves, all of you... What power would hell have if those imprisoned were not able to dream of heaven?
Neil Gaiman
It was as if she was a wannabe Persian cat who had just tasted sour milk.
Adele Rose
Restaurants are minefields for the socially inept
Graeme Simsion
If people were to tell other people everything about themselves, we’d live in a dull world.
Tom McCarthy
She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge.
Ian McEwan
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
Harlan Ellison
You can not go back. That's why it's hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long, as you don't choose, everything remains possible.
Jaco Van Dormael
She felt so lost and lonely. One last chile in walnut sauce left on the platter after a fancy dinner couldn't feel any worse than she did. How many times had she eaten one of those treats, standing by herself in the kitchen, rather than let it be thrown away. When nobody eats the last chile on the plate, it's usually because none of them wants to look like a glutton, so even though they'd really like to devour it, they don't have the nerve to take it. It was as if they were rejecting that stuffed pepper, which contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and the subtlety of walnuts, that marvelous chile in the walnut sauce. Within it lies the secret of love, but it will never be penetrated, and all because it wouldn't feel proper.
Laura Esquivel
The workshop door opened and Skulduggery emerged. "Ryan," he said, "stop leaning on my car.
Derek Landy
Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
J.K. Rowling
So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.
Ray Bradbury
Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack.
Max Brooks
I realized that the good stories were affecting the organs of my body in various ways, and the really good ones were stimulating more than one organ. An effective story grabs your gut, tightens your throat, makes your heart race and your lungs pump, brings tears to your eyes or an explosion of laughter to your lips.
Christopher Vogler
A writer writes. There are no exceptions to this reality. No excuses. Stop wasting time talking about your stories and get them on paper.
Christy Hall
I would rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 5 seconds.
Russell T. Davies
The stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth cant compete. but I dont believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It don't move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that's what it is.
Cormac McCarthy
Talk is free but the wise man chooses when to spend his words.
Neil Gaiman
When something good happens it's a miracle and you should wonder what God is saving up for you later.
Marshall Brickman
That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between. At the time, I hadn't pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I'm struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life. I'm happy in retrospect.
Maria Semple
A kiss is such an amazing thing -- So simple, so complex. The only human act that gives while it receives. Mouth to mouth, it almost seems the eating of one another. Maybe that’s all we are, food for each other. Why, I believe there’s a poem in there somewhere. Another kiss to inspire my muse, Desirée, and I’ll tell you something else you don’t know.
Kenneth C. Goldman
Do you know what she did? Your cunting daughter?
William Peter Blatty
The hard truths are the ones to hold tight. - Old Bear
George R.R. Martin
You like it in jail?It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?
Raymond Chandler
Looking back now, I would say that this was one of the first valuable lessons I learned, and one that would be useful in my future line of work. Sometimes things go wrong. It is inevitable. But it is a mistake to waste time and energy worrying about events that you cannot influence. Once they have happened, let them go.
Anthony Horowitz
Well…it’s whether you want to face certain death by taking a risk on the other route or almost certain death by scaling the walls?” she replied. “Therefore, for me, considering our options, it’s a no brainer.
Adele Rose
The trouble with eating Italian is that 5 or 6 days later, you're hungry again.
George Miller
It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.
Stephen King
It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.
Richard Matheson
Horror fiction seems to spawn more dumbass 'rules' than any other kind of writing, and one of the dumbest is the assumed 'requirement' of a twist ending, going all the way back to H.H. Munro. This story is also the result of a long rumination on how stories are sometimes scuttled or diminished by succumbing to such 'rules'.
David J. Schow
Preparing for the worst is an activity I have taken up since I turned thirty-five and the worst actually began to happen.
Delia Ephron
Hey presto: time travel. You don't need a time machine, it turns out, you just need a friend to laugh like a teenager. Chronology shivers.
Michael Marshall Smith
Biting's excellent. It's like kissing - only there is a winner.
Neil Gaiman
Here's some simple advice: Always be yourself. Never take yourself to seriously. And beware of advice from experts, pigs, and members of Parliament.
Jim Henson
Sex is a different medium, refracting time and sense, a biological hyperspace as remote from conscious existence as dreams, or as water is from air
Ian McEwan
For a girl, with each boy it’s as though a petal gets plucked each time.
Susan Minot
As your father keeps clean his lamp to have good light, so keep clean your spirit.
Richard Llewellyn
...to think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world." If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral you down into the ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however,requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline - training - is about. So, train your mind to dwell on sweet perfumes...
James Clavell
They believe themselves Lucifer's equals, Cain, all these pitiful little gnats. But there is only one that we have ever owned to be our superior. There is but one greater than us, and to him... to him we no longer speak.
Neil Gaiman
The fictitious kleptomaniac's only crime was stealing imaginations
Dean Cavanagh
And maybe it was fair; if a book was any good, it was a slap in the face to someone.
John Irving
Listen, ah don't wanna speak ill of the dead but have ah told you that mah mother was a great whopping whale of a cunt? Well she was precisely that - a great whopping whale of a hog's cunt with a dirty maggot for a brain.
Nick Cave
He did not know or care whether they were wizards or Muggles, friends or foes; all he cared about was that a dark stain was spreading across Dobby's front, and that he had stretched out his thin arms to Harry with a look of supplication. Harry caught him and laid him sideways on the cool grass."Dobby, no, don't die, don't die -"The elf's eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words."Harry...Potter..."And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great glassy orbs, sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see.
J.K. Rowling
It seems to occur to few of the attendees [of a writing retreat] that if you have a feel you just can't describe, you might just be, I don't know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.
Stephen King
I've learned that we're all entitled to have our secrets.
Nicholas Sparks
creativity is our only weapon against entropy
Dean Cavanagh
The universe is amply supplied with night.
Neil Gaiman
With hardly any effort at all, she made me feel special. Just like all the other people she toyed with.
Neal Shusterman
Men and the pursuit of them are strongly intertwined with my mental health. I would say, in my defensive defense, that the problem with being a serial monogamist is, there isn't anybody random or unimportant: everybody you sleep with really means something, which is to say each of them is on your public record. At some point I wake up thinking, Fuck this! I don't want another man in my bed ever again. What I really want is a cat.
Emma Forrest
If his surroundings could have reflected the feelings inside him, the pictures would have been screaming in pain.
J.K. Rowling
DANWhat do you want?ALICETo be loved.DANThat simple?ALICE It's a big want.
Patrick Marber
But thinking never took away tears. Only time did.
Allan Folsom
I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said.I know you didn't.I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of.I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. What's the hardest? I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back. Yessir.
Cormac McCarthy
He was still a kid inside. His body had grown, stretched, towered, tanned its skin, hardened its muscle, darkened its tawny shock of long hair, tightened its lines around jaw and eyes, thickened fingers and knuckles, but the brain didn't feel as if it had grown in sympathy with the rest. It was still green, full of tall, lush oaks and elms in summer; a creek ran through it, and the kids climbed around on its convolutions shouting, "This way, gang - we'll take a short-cut and head them off at Dead Man's Gulch!
Ray Bradbury
Silver’s sweet and gold’s our mother, but once you’re dead they’re worth less than that last shit you take as you lie dying.
George R.R. Martin
How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline."I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave.""Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline."Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.
Neil Gaiman
Mungu ana uwezo wa kukuwekea ulinzi kulia na kushoto yaani anayekulinda naye ana mlinzi wake. Lakini wakati mwingine anaacha ufuate kile ambacho moyo wako unataka kwa sababu hataki kukulazimisha ijapokuwa uwezo huo anao. Mungu hakukuumba kuwa roboti. Alikuumba kuwa huru kuchagua mema au mabaya usije ukamlaumu baadaye kwamba ulimchagua yeye kwa sababu hukuwa na uhuru. Msikilize Roho wa Mungu, kabla na katika kila jambo unalofanya.
Enock Maregesi
Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.""What do you think?" his father asked.Bran thought about it. "can a man still be brave if he's afraid?""That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him.
George R.R. Martin
I don't-" I shake my head. (...) "What? What were you going to say?" This is another trick of shrinks. They never let you stop in midthought. If you open your mouth, they want to know exactly what you had the intention of saying.
Ned Vizzini
...we know there's a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions on front of you. And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night...and what your dreams are like.
Stephen King
I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.
Woody Allen