It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.
I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.
Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immediately what could have happened, and that it never will.
Life always has an unhappy ending, but you can have a lot of fun along the way, and everything doesn't have to be dripping in deep significance.
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable.
We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.
Every great film should seem new every time you see it." Roger Ebert
The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.
The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don't wait for her. Start alone.
If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didn't.
All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.
There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.
Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?
Nicholas Sparks recently went on record as saying he is a greater novelist than Cormac McCarthy. This is true in the same sense that I am a better novelist than William Shakespeare.
Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself entertained. It gives you a better chance of an interesting job.
In thinking about 'depressing movies,' many people don't realize that all bad movies are depressing, and no good movies are.
Start. Don’t look back. If at the end it doesn’t meet your hopes, start again. Now you know more about your hopes.
A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the room.
One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going?
We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.
The very fact of snow is such an amazement.
Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.
So much of what happens by chance forms what becomes your life.
No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.
It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.
We are poor mortals, but it dreams to us that we can fly.
All I know is, it is better to be the whale than the squid.
Aren't you getting tired of people hating one another? What do they think they get out of it?
I find that when I am actually writing, I enter a zone of concentration too small to admit my troubles.