Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?
-- Paul Simon
Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?
-- Paul Simon
A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
-- Michael Winner, British film director
Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an
autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.
-- Marlo Thomas
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient
evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
-- G. B. Shaw
Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
-- T.S. Eliot, "Philip Massinger"
“You boys lookin' for trouble?”
"Sure. Whaddya got?"
-- Marlon Brando, "The Wild Ones"
Acting is not very hard. The most important things are to be able to laugh
and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. And if I have to laugh,
well, I think of my sex life.
-- Glenda Jackson
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious
to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look,
which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the
highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details,
worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
I used to be disgusted, now I find I'm just amused.
-- Elvis Costello
Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
-- actress Mary Pickford, 1925
I WISH I HAD A KRYPTONITE CROSS, because then you could keep both Dracula
and Superman away.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura soprano.
She ran the gamut of emotions from 'A' to 'B'.
-- Dorothy Parker, on a Kate Hepburn performance
It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
-- Garfield
A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.
-- Whitney Balliett
If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.
-- Louis Armstrong
I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
its situation.
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He
loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to
look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per
second per second takes over.
II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
intervenes suddenly.
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
stooge's surcease.
III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through
the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The
threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.
-- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother
drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
-- Shaw
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
-- Robert Benchley
An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.
-- Marlon Brando
Satire is what closes Saturday night.
-- George Kaufman
Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a representation
of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a representation of
anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone capable of sitting upright
in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
-- Richard Schickel
Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
spectacular adventure starring... Tippy, the Wonder Dog!
-- Bob & Ray
Would it help if I got out and pushed?
-- Princess Leia Organa
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel;
Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest
science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all
on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
-- Harlan Ellison
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
-- Oscar Wilde
BS: You remind me of a man.
B: What man?
BS: The man with the power.
B: What power?
BS: The power of voodoo.
B: Voodoo?
BS: You do.
B: Do what?
BS: Remind me of a man.
B: What man?
BS: The man with the power...
-- Cary Grant, "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer"
A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call
what he writes fiction.
-- William Faulkner
Everyone is in the best seat.
-- John Cage