Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
'Star Wars' is such a phenomenal global supernova that anything that gets said about it becomes kind of fact and gospel, and then taken by the legions of fans who are so excited to have more 'Star Wars,' that they roll off on all sorts of flights of fancy.
When you see 'Star Wars', and you see Greedo hustle up to Solo, you know they have a history; you understand that there's a dude named Jabba the Hutt who's after him, and Greedo is going to try to shoot him and get the money. You get what's going on there.
After the Manchu government had carried on wars with foreign nations and had been defeated, China was forced to sign many unequal treaties. Foreign nations are still using these treaties to bind China, and as a result, China fails at whatever she attempts.
When people send people on summer camps or bonding trips, they send them to do things like high rope climbing or extraordinary things. And when you do extraordinary things with people, like fighting battles or simulating huge wars, you do bond very quickly.
In 'Star Wars: Episode II,' when Jango Fett is chasing Obi Wan Kenobi through an asteroid field, they needed a big asteroid to shatter into a million pieces, and I had to figure out how to do the fracturing, write the code, and show an artist how to use it.
I rewatched a lot of 'Star Wars' when I did 'Rogue One,' and the thing I learned was that as a young person, consuming 'Star Wars' at the level that I consumed 'Star Wars,' it kind of molds your visual psyche, so you see the world in 'Star Wars'-ian fashion.
I mean listen, ultimately I'm positive George Lucas was inspired by 'Dune' when he made 'Star Wars.' I don't know if that's sacrilegious to talk about, but there are a lot of similarities in some areas, so you could tell he was definitely influenced by that.
'Star Wars,' 'Doctor Who,' 'Forgotten Realms,' even 'Firefly' and 'The X-Files' have shared world novels and other media. I can't help but notice these settings have large shelf space in bookstores, so their publishers and authors are getting something right.
Writers are not obliged to deal with current events, but it happens that the big story of our times - the al-Qaida attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - is being told in some of the greatest books of our time.
I believe in a strong two-party system, and when one party is losing so spectacularly, it emboldens the other party to overreach and become a cartoon of itself, invoking awful things like - I'm just spit-balling here - child separation policies and trade wars.
I've been a radio and television news person since I was 19 years old. I'm 57 years old now. But the advantage is that I have studied, investigated, and reported over those years on nearly every major story from wars and recessions to grass roots local issues.
My boy cousins used to sit my older brother and me down and take us through a film-studies course. It included 'Tremors', 'The Goonies', and, of course, 'Star Wars'. That was when it began: sitting cross-legged watching as the opening crawl goes up the screen.
The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls.
When I was involved with 'Star Wars,' I was very interested in all the backstories, and I used to pepper George with all kinds of questions about anything that crossed my mind, because I was very, very into it. But when the job came to an end, I had to move on.
If the graves of the thousands of victims who have fallen in the terrible wars of the two races had been placed in line the philanthropist might travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, and be constantly in sight of green mounds.
Unless we do things in this country to slow down our population, slow down our birth control, provide better water for people, provide power for people, we're gonna find out that the next wars are not going to be fought over diamonds, gold and political things.
I went to grad school with the grand plan of getting my Ph.D. and writing weighty, Tudor-Stuart-set historical fiction - from which I emerged with a law degree and a series of light-hearted historical romances about flower-named spies during the Napoleonic wars.
Tolkien was, I believe, writing about his experience in the First and Second World Wars, where he would have spent a lot of time without any female contact. He was part of the fellowship of men who went to war, and I think, really, that's what he's writing about.
Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.
In a war, no matter the outcome of a certain skirmish or battle, the winner is the party whose attitudes, behaviors and preoccupations come to dominate the postwar landscape. By this measure, the outcome of the gender wars, if wars they were, is clear: women won.
I leave to the militarists the difficult task of trying to explain to us how these wars have served to shape character or to promote the progress of civilization or to achieve the reign of justice on earth. So far, they have not come forward with the explanation.
I guess because I'm so young, I m not sure of what lies ahead for me. I'm more into going the route of producing and directing. I just made a little short film. I'm more excited about going the route of doing a Drew Barrymore or... what's the one from 'Star Wars?'
'Jurassic Park' and 'Star Wars' shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And 'Lord of the Rings' took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write.
I've become very, very liberal as far as war is concerned. It's just too terrible. I've been to wars and I've seen what happens. I know what it is to be hurt, and it's nothing compared to these guys. To be blind for the rest of your life. To have prosthetic limbs.
I am actually one of those who took President Obama at his word when he first ran - that he would get us out of ill-advised wars, that he would do something about health care costs, and that he would protect civil liberties. Like many Americans, I was disappointed.
I'm a 'Clash of the Titans'/'Star Wars' baby. I'm not a new 'Star Wars' baby. I'm not an 'Avatar' baby. That full CG doesn't work for me. I need interactivity. I need to feel the goo. I need to feel people coming out of animatronics and just interacting with props.
In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, not does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defence.
In the end, all that time I spent in the 'Star Wars' universe fostered galaxies of creativity and made me a better person here on Earth, because it taught me that everyone counts. That's why I can sincerely and with a straight face say: 'May the Force be with you.'
President Obama inherited a broken country mired in two wars, a financial crisis, a mortgage mess and more than we all probably even know about and has in my opinion brought us back from the brink. But I still see my friends in no better shape and the gap widening.
School-leavers unfortunately will come away thinking the First World War consisted simply of 'going over the top' on the Western Front to slaughter in no-man's-land, when the conflict extended so much further, to the collapse of four empires and numerous civil wars.
'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you're being honest, you realize that, as an artist, you're not a policy maker.
As a card-carrying space nerd and NASA's chief scientist, I love space movies, from 'Star Trek' to 'Star Wars' to my all-time favorite - 'The Dish', an Australian comedy that celebrates that first moment when Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the surface of our moon.
As an infantry officer who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, I have led men in combat and trained them on tactics and strategy. The mission of the infantry is to 'close with, and destroy, the enemy.' Our job, in a direct way, is to fight and win wars.
I'm really into sci-fi. The reason I'm an actor is because of 'Star Wars' - I saw that and I knew that's what I wanted to do. But most of the projects I'm offered as an actor are straightforward dramas, so I haven't really been given a chance to do that kind of role.
My dad and I used to shoot little one-stop animations on an old 8mm film camera when I was no more than 7 or 8, and when he was away at work, I would keep shooting nonsensical, short animated films using 'Star Wars' figures or Smurfs - depended what the narrative was.
Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then, he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.
There may be some backward countries where the mass of the people are on a subsistence level and where, as an aftermath of wars or partial crop failures, the standard of living has to be drastically reduced, but this certainly is not the case in our prosperous nations.
At the last Celebration I spoke before an auditorium full of people and I could just feel the affection and the positive feelings that they were exuding. It was actually moving. I remember thinking, 'I'm not worthy,' because 'Star Wars' is so much bigger than all of us.
I read fantasy books like the Harry Potter books, 'Twilight,' also biographies, and I like to read about people who have been through stuff like wars or lost their families - real life stuff, you know? I like to read about their experiences and how they coped with that.
Since Star Wars, that film's success led to bigger budgets, more hardware, that the great movies like the ones I did, which were studio movies, are now independent movies. They range from half a million to several million, and a lot of those have very interesting roles.
Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves - their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.
Since January 2003, at the height of the debate on the possible unilateral strike against Iraq, I have advocated for a reinstatement of the military draft to ensure a more equitable representation of people making sacrifices in wars in which the United States is engaged.
The U.S. has taken an active role in wars from Libya to the Central African Republic, sent special ops forces into countries from Somalia to South Sudan, conducted airstrikes and abduction missions, even put boots on the ground in countries where it pledged it would not.
History is filled with tragic examples of wars that result from diplomatic impasse. Whether in our local communities or in international relations, the skillful use of our communicative capacities to negotiate and resolve differences is the first evidence of human wisdom.
If people really saw what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, then they might be marching in the streets to end wars. But you know, I think that no one ever sees because we're not allowed to see, and we're not allowed to publish what we do see. So it's quite difficult.
Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines.
I literally cannot remember a time when I was not asking myself what events in 'Star Wars' were like for Princess Leia. The good side of all this is that what looked like 'goofing off' or 'daydreaming' these many years has all turned out to be valuable career preparation.
We're all sick of holy wars and bloodshed because religion is supposed to give us life and a better life and is supposed to bring out our best self. When it results in mass destruction and hatred and anxiety, it's the antithesis I think of what religion was designed to do.
It's either 'Saw' made for $4 million or 'Star Wars,' 'Star Trek,' 'Guardians of the Galaxy' et cetera being made for $150 million. So the $30 and $40 million films don't get made unless they're maybe 'Ride Along.' But I don't really know why. I don't get paid to know why.
The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDs, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of those wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead - everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real.