Screenwriters From The United States

"When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said "I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excrutiatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.""

"Dilsey stroked Ben's lower head, slowly and steadily, smoothing the bang upon his brow. He wailed quietly, unhurriedly. "Hush," Dilsey said. "Hush, now. We be gone in a minute. Hush, now." He wailed quietly and steadily."

"Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets."

"When people act like niggers, no matter who they are, the only thing to do is treat them like a nigger."

"Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say."

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it."

"There is no such thing," meditated Bill, "as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damnfool if he doesn't."

"Civilization," mused Bill once, "started with distillation."

"Well, between Scotch and nothin', I suppose I'd take Scotch. It's the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find."

"Some folks wouldn't even speak when they passed me on the street. Then MGM came to town to film Intruder in the Dust, and that made some difference because I'd brought money into Oxford [Mississippi]. But it wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand thirty thousand dollars."

"Why that's a hundred miles away. That's a long way to go just to eat."

"There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it's the risk, the gamble. In any event it's a thing I need."

"Mr. Khrushchev says that Communism, the police state, will bury the free ones. He is a smart gentleman, he knows that this is nonsense since freedom, man's dim concept of and belief in the human spirit is the cause of all his troubles in his own country. But if he means that Communism will bury capitalism, he is correct. That funeral will occur about ten minutes after the police bury gambling. Because simple man, the human race, will bury both of them. That will be when we have expended the last grain, dram, and iota of our natural resources. But man himself will not be in that grave. The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next."

"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed. If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this ... as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth; in one generation all the Napoleons and Hitlers and Caesars and Mussolinis and Stalins and all the other tyrants who want power and aggrandizement, and the simple politicians and time-servers who themselves are merely baffled or ignorant or afraid, who have used, or are using, or hope to use, man’s fear and greed for man’s enslavement, will have vanished from the face of it."

"It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago, and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them. It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died."

"Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be."

"For the holy are susceptible too to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God's aid... and the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy."

"The two Indians crossed the plantation toward the slave quarters. ... "Man was not made to sweat." "That's so. See what it has done to their flesh." "Yes. Black. It has a bitter taste, too." "You have eaten of it?" "Once." ... Doom began to acquire more slaves and to cultivate some of his land, as the white people did. But he never had enough for them to do. In utter idleness the majority of them led lives transplanted whole out of African jungles ... there was a hierarchy of cousins and uncles who ruled the clan and who finally gathered in squatting conclave over the Negro question, squatting profoundly ... "We cannot eat them," one said. "Why not?" "There are too many of them." "That's true," a third said. "Once we started, we should have to eat them all. And that much flesh diet is not good for man." ... "It means work," the third said. "Let the Negroes do it," the first said. ... "Yao. Let the Negroes do it. They appear to like sweating.""

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant An elephant's faithful, One hundred percent."

"You want my opinion? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love."

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

"Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

"Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory."

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

"[...] right now, when the Japs are planting their hatchets in our skulls, it seems like a hell of a time for us to smile and warble: “Brothers!” It is a rather flabby battle cry. If we want to win, we've got to kill Japs, whether it depresses John Haynes Holmes or not. We can get palsy-walsy afterward with those that are left."

"You're off to great places. Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way."

"Out there things can happen, and frequently do, To people as brainy and footsy as you. And when things start to happen, don't worry, don't stew. Just go right along, you'll start happening too!"

"With your head full of brains, and your shoes full of feet, You're too smart to go down any not-so-good-street."

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose."

"you'll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut"

"A person's a person, no matter how small."

"On the 15th of May, in the Jungle of Nool, In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool, He was splashing... enjoying the jungle's great joys... When Horton the elephant heard a small noise."

"And that is a story that no one can beat, When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street."

"Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them."

"You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room."

"When at last we are sure You've been properly pilled, Then a few paper forms Must be properly filled So that you and your heirs May be properly billed."

"Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It's more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack."

"You make 'em, I amuse 'em."

"... and the wolf chewed up the children and spit out their bones ... But those were Foreign Children and it really didn't matter ..."

"Young cat! If you keep Your eyes open enough, Oh, the stuff you will learn! The most wonderful stuff!"

"The more that you read, The more things you will know. The more that you learn, The more places you'll go."

"That's why I say, "Duckie! Don’t grumble! Don’t stew! Some critters are much-much, oh, ever so much-much, so muchly much-much more unlucky than you!""

"Thank goodness for all the things you are not! Thank goodness you're not something someone forgot, and left all alone in some punkerish place like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space."

"And suppose that you lived in that forest in France Where the average young person just hasn't a chance To escape from the perilous pants-eating plants! But your pants are safe! You're a fortunate guy. And you ought to be shouting, "How lucky am I!""

"It's a troublesome world. All the people who're in it are troubled with troubles almost every minute. You oughta be thankful, a whole heaping lot, For the places and people you're lucky you're not!"

"Now all that was left 'neath the bad-smelling sky was my big empty factory... the Lorax... and I. The Lorax said nothing. Just gave me a glance, just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance, as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants. And I'll never forget the grim look on his face when he heisted himself and took leave of this place, through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace. And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks with the one word: UNLESS. Whatever that meant . . . well, I just couldn't guess."

"So . . . Catch!" calls the Once-ler. He lets something fall. "It's a Truffula Seed. It's the last one of all! You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back."

"UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

"I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees, Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please! But I'm also in charge of the brown Bar-ba-loots, Who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loot suits, And happily lived, eating Truffula fruits. Now, thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, There's not enough Truffula fruit to go 'round! And my poor Bar-ba-loots are all getting the crummies Because they have gas, and no food, in their tummies!"

"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze. "I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs" – He was very upset as he shouted and puffed – "What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?"