Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Being a writer in Hollywood is like going to Hitler's Eagle Nest with a great idea for a bar mitzvah.
The first amendment ensures not that speech will be fair, but that it will be free. It cannot be both.
The terror and beauty of the dream come from the connection of previously unrelated mundanities of life.
I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact.
It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.
It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.
They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.
The job of the artist, is to say, wait a second, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's re-examine it.
Where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?
Art and mass entertainment and propaganda, they can all be plotted on the same graph, but there is a difference.
Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.
Always do things the least interesting way, the most blunt way, and you make a better movie. This is my experience.
Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.
There is no such thing as character other than the habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousand years ago.
I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is to be an employer.
Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.
The liberals in my neighbourhood wouldn't give away Brentwood to the Palestinians, but they want to give away Tel Aviv.
I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.
A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance.
I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.
You got an all-out prize fight, you wait 'til the fight's over, one guy's left standing and that's how you know who's won.
For it is written that just as it is forbidden to partake of the forbidden, it is forbidden not to partake of the permitted.
I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write.
Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.
Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?"
Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.
You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'
When we leave the play saying how spectacular the sets or costumes were, or how interesting the ideas, it means we had a bad time.
Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting f***ed.
The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free.
The mind is a mill which can incessant turn, 'til its mere operation focus the stress inward and the stones grind themselves to dust.
The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle.
It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience.
The conscious mind is going to suggest the obvious, the cliché, because these things have offered the security of having succeeded in the past.
Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.
A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team.
Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.
Any claim to actual identification as a drama must rest upon the construction of a plot independent of the assignment of affliction to the protagonist.
As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.
They have a desire to put on plays and to fulfill that traditional role of a theater in a community: to be the place where people go to hear the truth.
One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.
Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible.
The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
If the scene bores you when you read it, rest assured it WILL bore the actors, and will then bore the audience, and we're all going to be back in the breadline.
I don't have any experience with film schools. I suspect that they're useless, because I've had experience with drama schools, and have found them to be useless.
If you find that a point cannot be made without narration, it is virtually certain that the point is unimportant to the story (which is to say, to the audience).
How can I be secure? Through amassing wealth beyond all measure? No. And what's beyond measure? That's a sickness. That's a trap. There is no measure. Only greed.
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign.