“There was no theory, no cant in his leadership…Because he had no code, except an aesthetic one—a commitment to a style of life—he was easily betrayed by those he trusted. There he was, the new primitive, a Byronic Dead-End Kid, with his quality of vulnerability. His acting was so physical—so exploratory, tentative, wary—that we could sense with him, feel him pull back at the slightest hint of rebuff. We in the audience felt protective: we knew how lonely he must be in his assertiveness. Who even in hell wants to be an outsider?” — Pauline Kael

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.” — Stephen Hawking

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies— 'God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'” — Kurt Vonnegut

“He’s the guy on his horse, the guy alone. He has his own code of honor, his own code of ethics, his own rules of living. He never, ever tries to impress the women, but he always gets the girl.”

“The movie’s sentimental paranoia obviously rang true to a large young audience’s vision. In the late 60’s, it was cool to feel that you couldn’t win, that everything was rigged and hopeless. The film was infused with an elegiac sense of American failure, and it had a psychedelic pull to it.” — Pauline Kael on Easy Rider

“This great evil. Where does it come from? How’d it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doin’ this? Who’s killin’ us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin’ us with the sight of what we might’ve known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?” — The Thin Red Line

“[Phil Jackson] is on the cusp of being A Great Man, an intangible designation I suspect he desperately desires. But he has never really failed. And if you want to be A Great Man, you need to fail (at least once).” — Chuck Klosterman

“We are not native. We have no generations of Americans behind us. We have roots elsewhere. We are looking in from the outside. To me, that seems to be perfectly natural.” — Don DeLillo

“That’s all we have finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.” — Raymond Carver

"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.” — General Tecumseh Sherman

>

“That aside, let say that I swear, on the souls of my grandchildren, that I will not be the one to break the peace we have made here today.” — Don Corleone

“I have a very strict gun-control policy. If there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.” — Clint Eastwood

“That plane’s dustin’ crops where there ‘aint no crops.” — North By Northwest

“I am a person motivated and influenced by so many diverse forces I sometimes question the sanity of my existence. I am a living paradox—deeply religious, yet not as convinced of my exact beliefs as I ought to be; wanting responsibility yet shirking it; loving the truth but often times giving way to falsity… I detest selfishness, but see it in the mirror every day… I view those, some of whom are very dear to me, who have never learned how to live. I desire and struggle to be different from them, but often am almost an exact likeness… I, in my attempts to be honest, will not be the hypocrite I hate.” — Bill Clinton

“It is not merely its incomparable physical impact that makes the murder probably the most horrific incident in any fiction film…It also constitutes an alienation effect so shattering that we scarcely recover from it. Never—not even in Vertigo—has identification been broken off so brutally.” — Robin Wood, Hitchcock’s films revisited

“…Anthony Mann’s films indicate he believed in the possibility of a high level of communication without words through the specific direction of images and ideas with the tools available to cinema. His work, with its clear progression toward specific visual meaning, becomes almost didactic. He proves the point that there is such a thing as film narrative. His efforts were directed toward making that narrative flow in a coherent manner in a specific direction.” — Jeanine Basinger

“When I see the city from my window — no, I don’t feel how small I am — but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.” — Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Speak softly and carry a big stick.” — Teddy Roosevelt

“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.” — Lolita

“People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually its the way things happen to you in real life thats unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, its like watching television. You don’t feel anything.” — Andy Warhol

“…[Nicholas] Ray does have a theme, and a very important one; namely, that every relationship establishes it’s own moral code and that there is no such thing as abstract morality. This much was made clear inRebel Without a Cause when James Dean and his fellow adolescents leaned back in their seats at the planetarium and passively accepted the proposition that the universe itself was drifting without any frame of reference.”

“Doom was woven in your nerves…” — Robert Lowell

“I got these small hands. I got a little girl’s hands.”— Jake LaMotta

“Faced with the possibility of moving on and moving forward, neither of these guys can do it. What’s more, they don’t want to. It’s part of who they are. They love it. And the love is what true hate is.” — Chuck Klosterman

“You could see people on the shore but it was far off and you couldn’t see what they were doin’. They were probably callin’ for help or somethin’, or they were tryin’ to bury somebody or somethin’.” — Days of Heaven (1979)

“California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.” – Don DeLillo

“I never felt I played the great part. I never felt that I directed the great movie. And I can’t say that it’s anybody’s fault but my own. But I think there are moments. And sometimes, in a career, moments are enough.” – Dennis Hopper