Screenwriter Quotes

Stuff your eyes with wonder.

A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.

Loving someone and having them love you back is the most precious thing in the world.

I have never loved a man as much as I have loved myself

Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun.

A man should have two wives: one to love and one to sew on his buttons.

All of sudden, this shooting star went by, and all I could think was that they were listening to us somehow.

Those who don't build must burn.

The merry-go-round was running, yes, but... It was running backward. The small calliope inside the carousel machinery rattle-snapped its nervous-stallion shivering drums, clashed its harvest-moon cymbals, toothed its castanets, and throatily choked and sobbed its reeds, whistles, and baroque flutes.

That's another reason I keep putting marriage off. I know I want something like what you two share, and I'm not sure I've found it yet. I'm not sure I ever will. And with love like that...they say anything's possible, right?

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

Over time, quality work will lead to an audience for your work.

Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.

Woman: You certainly know the way to a man's heart. Mae West: Funny, too, 'cause I don't know how to cook.

They inspire you, they entertain you, and you end up learning a ton even when you don't know it

If you're embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn't include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

But no matter what was going on in our lives, I could imagine lying beside her in bed at the end of the day, holding her while we talked and laughed, lost in each other's arms

We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.

Did you ever realize you have more opinions about my life than your own life?

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.

An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience.

You've gotten so caught up in being alone that you're afraid of what might happen if you actually find someone else that can take you away from it.

I know so much about men because I went to night school.

Unless you had a popular video on YouTube or could perform shows in front of thousands, musical ability meant nothing.

I only read biographies, metaphysics and psychology. I can dream up my own fiction.

We meet on the common ground of an uncommon age and share out our gifts of dark and light, good and bad, simple joy and not so simple sorrow.

Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.

I ask myself how I could give in to this perpetual vertigo that I in fact provoked and feared. I floated among erratic clouds and talked to myself in front of the mirror in the vain hope of confirming who I was. My delirium was so great that during a student demonstration complete with rocks and bottles, I had to make an enormous effort not to lead it as I held up a sign that would sanctify my truth: I am mad with love.

It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.

Girls, give all your gentlemen friends an even break, even if you have to break them in the attempt.

everyone - you included - is on her best behavior in the beginning of a relationship. Sometimes little quirks turn out to be big ones, and the big advantage that women have - sometimes the only advantage - is their intuition.

Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can.

I love you, Gabby, more than you'll ever know. You're everything I've ever wanted in a wife. You're every hope and every dream I've ever had, and you've made me happier than any man could possibly be. I don't ever want to give that up. I can't.

He was carrying a suitcase with clothing in order to stay and another just like it with almost two thousand letters that she had written him. They were arranged by date in bundles ties with colored ribbons, and they were all unopened.

Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.

Between the covers of the books that no one had ever read again, in the old parchments damaged by dampness, a livid flower had prospered, and in the air that had been the purest and brightest in the house an unbearable smell of rotten memories floated.

Now let's take up the minorities in our civilisation, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!

Fame and money are gifts given to us only after we have gifted the world with our best, our lonely, our individual truths.

Jamie: "I didn't want anybody to be weird around me." Landon: "Including me?" Jamie: "Especially you! You know, I was getting along with everything fine. I accepted it, and then you happened!"

Science fiction is a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present. You can criticize communists, racists, fascists or any other clear and present danger, and they can't imagine you are writing about them.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

It was a lesson that I would learn in time though it wasn't Hegbert who taught me.

There is bound to be someone driven mad by love who will give you the chance to study the effects of gold cyanide on a cadaver. And when you do find one, observe with care, they almost always have crystals in their heart

Each person was himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid, always alone. If I should scream, if I should call for help, would anyone hear would it even matter?

Grown-ups always say that things are complicated.

When you have a healthy appetite there is no such thing as bad bread.

It ain't no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don't break any.

I don't know. I really don't. While I was in the living room, I kept asking myself what I really wanted in life." She squeezed his hand. "And do you know what the answer was? The answer was that I wanted two things. First, I want you. I want us. I love you and I always have.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Horses frighten me as much as chickens do,’ he said. ‘That is too bad, because lack of communication with horses has impeded human progress,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘If we ever broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur.

[On the metaphysical:] ... I knew in some marvelous way I had touched the hem of the unknown. And being me, I wanted to lift that hemline a little bit more.

Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.

I'll be darned!" said Douglas. "I never thought of that. That's brilliant! It's true. Old people never were children!" "And it's kind of sad," said Tom, sitting still."There's nothing we can do to help them.

It was, at last, real life, with my heart safe and condemned to die of happy love in the joyful agony of any day after my hundredth birthday.

The real fear isn't rejection, but that there won't be enough time in your life to write all the stories that you have in you.

I love all of the arts. I love motion pictures. I love stage. I love theater.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write.

That's the difference between family and friends. Family is always there, no matter what, even when it's not right next door. Which means that you'll find a way to keep the connection alive. Especially since you realize how important it is.

But even though she was attractive, there was something else about her that caught his eye. She was intelligent, he could sense that right away, and confident, too, as if she were able to move through life on her own terms. To him, these were the things that really mattered. Without them, beauty was nothing.