Screenwriters

"Look, see, behold. Above all, listen."

"You know how vivid things are in extremis. There's something going on in the brain. Chemicals. They make the moment indelible.""

"He continued talking. "When you find out about real education you can never leave it alone. I don't mean A-levels and things like that - you are just proving something to yourself with them - but books, ideas, feelings. Everything to do with up here." He tapped his temple. "And here." He tapped the middle of his chest."

"Are you a conduit for the music?"

""Alcohol is the rubber tyres between me and the pier." He held up his glass to her. They chinked."

"Now that they had mobile phones, theoretically it should have been easier to keep tabs on one another. But practically it had not helped. In the first instance you had to remember to bring the bloody thing with you. If you had it with you, invariably one or other of the mobiles was switched off or needed charging. And then, even if you did get through, Stella's phone had some mysterious setting which diverted incoming calls straight to 'Leave a message'. And her phone did not ring. And she did not answer it."

"INTERVIEWER: (After an awkward silence) And how do you see the future? PROFUNDO: I wait for it to come and then look at it (laughs)."

"She found a large and classy department store. Like any other city, Amsterdam was full of shops which sold things that nobody wanted. Or the kind of things some people wanted but nobody needed."

"The funny side is repressed inside myself somehow, but it was always there. I think it's from my mother's side, she was always funny and making jokes, so I didn't suffer at all! When I get together with Bud, something just clicks and we are funny."

"I didn't, I thought, really like her, for really she wasn't the sort of girl to whom I was usually attracted. I'd always thought that the girls who appealed to me most were the rather energetic, rather vigorous, rather healthy girls I saw on the tennis courts or on the beach. The girls who swam well, and whose skins were beautifully tanned, and who had broad shoulders. The girls who looked well in white. The girls with clear, straightforward eyes. The girls who laughed a great deal. I'd always thought I preferred a girl like that, and it was only an unfortunate set of circumstances which prevented me from meeting one."

"Did she know what it was for a man to come to that point in his life when he found it impossible to touch the body of his own wife? To look at it; and to feel nothing. Not to desire it, at all, when the flesh was inert and dead and meaningless? To have the act of love become (with one's own wife) the most meaningless of all acts?"

"Alone; it was the one active passion I had left now, the only real obsession. I had acquired, I hoped, with the passage of the years, the bad years, a measure of patience, and I thought of myself as being somewhat tight-mouthed, and even persevering, virtues I had always so conspicuously lacked, and I thought the time was at last gone when I had exhausted myself with futile rebellions. The rebellions seemed now, from this cool distance, this slight eminence I had achieved, silly and wasteful, and it was cunning that now struck me as the valuable quality to have, the distinctive characteristic. There had been so much blind impetuosity in the past; there had been so many indiscriminate wounds inflicted; I had lacerated myself as well as others so unhappily so many times. Now I fought, or it seemed to me I was fighting, a much sounder although a much more limited and more circumspect war: it consisted mostly of careful withdrawals, of very conscious retreats."

"There was a noisy rush of water from the bathroom, and she appeared, ready for the evening, a smile she had chosen, I thought, from a small collection of smiles she kept for occasions like this, fixed upon her face."

"Directing TV series was an instructive experience for me at first, but it became a destructive one after a while. Today, good writers prefer working in TV rather than movies, so you’ll find better and sharper writing there. But most series are conventional: the storytelling has to be efficient, and the dramaturgy is always the same—the end of the last act is intended to hook you into watching the next episode. And for me, [directing series] means losing the innocence you need to make films, a process in which you don’t know what tools you may discover along the way to move the story forward."

"There’s a kind of an unspoken acceptance of the idea that sex against girls is kind of the real assault. The violation of women is what you should pay attention to. There’s a shame about men speaking out. A sense that if you were abused, it was your own fault. Men are not supposed to talk about their feelings. Men have to be strong and men don’t cry."

"It still makes me angry. The church still controls education in Ireland. And it’s an obscenity to tell innocent children they’re going to go to hell for taking sixpence out of their mother’s purse…[in America] It’s regarded as important not to put money into it, because if you put money into it, you start people thinking, and then they start to question the system and that’s dangerous…I want to go on that journey with my child trying to expand their vision of the world. I’m not going to leave it to them to take over her brain."

"The priest’s breath was sour and hot as he moved towards me…Then there was blackness...I remembered every single moment up to a point…Then it’s concreted over. What’s buried there? Is it something worth exhuming?..Yes. Maybe if I say it, it will lose its power over me."

"Nothing much will change under Biden because his thing is: let’s return America to what it was. Well, what America was caused Trump. The Democrats rolled out the red carpet."

"When I found out that the Pentagon has a film department, a lot of things made sense to me. America reveals itself to the world through film. We absorb the American dream because they own the means of production... Reagan and Bush essentially appealed to American cinema mythology; the good guys out on their farms in cowboy hats. America is Gary Cooper. The terrorists are the Indians on horseback. Trump appeals as much to our cinematic language as to our politics: he works through the old reliables of fear and lies."

"We now prefer the fantasy…We find comfort in the lies. I was the victim of that for so long. I imbibed everything. It led to a place where I became extremely unhappy. And now I question everything. I believe it’s a responsibility to do it."

"As far as I can remember, I’ve always thought in pictures and had a vivid imagination. In my animated films the design of every frame is of great importance, as if it would be a painting. Most of the time, and particularly in a mythical, fabulous context, my human characters, even lead characters, are only a minor part of the whole image. To try to express realistic human behavior in animation has limitations. Such attempts in serious animation are often absurdly ridiculous. Why would one imitate reality? Just leave it to living actors! Earthbound reality is not for animation. Animation is a stylized, fantastic world."

"Of course our society in general always presents us with different challenges, and it’s easier to be not who we are but to go on the level, to go down to the level which is less human, it’s more difficult to be humans than not to be humans."

"I think faith is important, it’s like a certain spine that you have. … It allows you to see things in a different light. To be calmer in certain situations, to be stronger in other situations, to be able to not always judge other people, to look first at yourself. And I think it’s an important inspiration for my creative work."

"Devo al film della Wertmuller "Mimì metallurgico ferito nell'onore" il successo di un personaggio che è piaciuto molto all'estero e con il quale sono stato a lungo identificato con grande piacere."

"Pasqualino Settebellezze era un film che non voleva far nessuno, perché parla di un campo di concentramento. È una storia vera. Sono riuscito a convincere Lina [Wertmüller] a farlo e ha avuto quattro candidature all'Oscar."

"I wanted the two [lead] roles, of Mimi and Fiore, to be played by Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato. Both were already well-respected actors but had not yet played lead roles in movies. At the beginning, the producers were hesitant and had to take a gamble on these two talents. In the end, everyone was convinced of how good they were, and we formed a beautiful team."

"They were human beings who had a life, who had a lineage, who had parents, who had children, who had lives. They were not poor or rich. They were people and these people had humanity. So it was important that someone who knew them write about the event…"

"It's not often you see your city falling down in front of your eyes. People are screaming in pain all around you. Children are running in the streets. Some people start talking about the end of the world. But writing, for me, was as important as taking care of the injured."

"How I began to write is different than how I became a writer. They are two different things. Many people write but they do not become writers. To become a writer is a job. It involves planning and it affects all parts of your life. Even what you eat—being a writer means not eating food with too much rich sauce to avoid taking a long afternoon nap! It’s like being a professional athlete. And a writer must choose between being a sprinter who writes a book, and being a writer who creates an oeuvre. If you want to create an oeuvre, you have to be careful not to put all your energy into the first book. You have to have a vision for the long term..."

"The dictionary doesn’t have individual contributions. It’s like building a cathedral. The workers are unknown. But one of the things I tend to do is suggest that it might be interesting to have examples of things that aren’t from France. If it’s a wind, which we worked on recently, does it always have to be the mistral? What about the winds of elsewhere? How about zephyrs or siroccos? In French, there exists an enormous variety of classifications, proverbs, and witticisms about winds. There are winds that push ships as well as winds that come from the gut—the noisy, bodily winds of Rabelais. All shadings have to be in the dictionary."

"The living are those who are a shame. Don't you think so? The dead do not give war to anyone; but what is alive, they do not find how to mortify the lives of others. If they even kill each other to end the hearts of others. With that I tell you everything. On the other hand, we must not hate the dead. They are the great thing. Are good. The best beings on earth."

"I owe a special debt to Juan Rulfo, the Mexican writer who gave voice to the blood-soaked earth of the Mexican Revolution and a people who endure."

"In my life there are many silences…In my writing, too."

"I belong to the first generation of Latin American writers brought up reading other Latin American writers. Before my time the work of Latin American writers was not well distributed, even on our continent. In Chile it was very hard to read other writers from Latin America. My greatest influences have been all the great writers of the Latin American Boom in literature: García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Cortázar, Borges, Paz, Rulfo, Amado, etc."

"Nothing can last forever; there is no memory, however intense, that does not fade."

"Among the Mexican writers I prefer Juan Rulfo for the wonderful mystery and magic of his writings, all those disembodied voices."

"A whole generation of the Chicano writers were influenced by the Latin American male boom because that's all we got. Borges was an influence, but the ones I really stay with are Manuel Puig and Juan Rulfo. Rulfo obviously for his rhythms and what he's doing with voices."

"It is a difficult thing to grow up knowing that the thing where we can hold on to take root is dead."

"Learn this, son: in the new nest you have to leave an egg. When I aged you, you will learn to live, you will know that the children are leaving you, that they do not thank you for anything; They eat until your memory."

"’I will get to the idea that I dreamed you,’ he said. Because the truth is that I've known you for a long time, but I like you more when I dream of you. Then I make of you what I want. Not like now that, as you see, we have not been able to do anything."

"As a very young girl, I understood that the interior activities of the home are as significant as the exterior activities of society."

"Tradition is an element that enters into play with destiny, because you are born into a particular family -- Jewish or Islamic or Christian or Mexican -- and your family determines to some extent what you are expected to become. And society is always there attempting to determine the role we will play within it. And these expectations are not always in good relationship with our personal desires. I am always interested in that relationship between outer reality and inner desire, and I think it is important to pay attention to the inner voice, because it is the only way to discover your mission in life, and the only way to develop the strength to break with whatever familial or cultural norms are preventing you from fulfilling your destiny."

"I grew up in a modern home, but my grandmother lived across the street in an old house that was built when churches were illegal in Mexico…She had a chapel in the home, right between the kitchen and dining room. The smell of nuts and chilies and garlic got all mixed up with the smells from the chapel, my grandmother's carnations, the liniments and healing herbs."

"The only way to find peace is when you are not separated, when you are not fighting, when you part of the whole."

"As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self understanding and this is something that can't be taught. The law of love is what one really should be learning in school, and what I want to communicate to people is that they should disobey the social rules that do not pertain to them, they should rebel against what is not personally true."

"For me today, the most important filmmaker alive, for me personally is Pedro Almodóvar. Because he takes people on the fringes of society and they are bizarre. And If you read about them in the newspapers, you would think they were criminals. But in an Almodóvar film, you forgive them and you even learn to love them, which I think is closer to godliness, than making a film about good people running around."

"But it’s one of my worries, I can’t get over it in my mind. I mean, I can’t even reconcile myself to the fact that death is real. Plus I’m an atheist, so I have no belief in the afterlife and no creed to help me out. I see the whole thing as unnatural, I know that sounds odd.” He snorts. “So yes, I’m definitely afraid of dying."

"In fact I was never the son my parents wanted. I mean, I think that they really loved me. But it’s something I realised from a very young age."

"I've had a very good relationship with my mother, but there's a whole generation of Spanish women who have struggled: very strong fighting figures who carry their families. These women are now in their 80s and feel that life has been unfair to them; they don't know how to grow old and how to be happy old ladies."

"I rely on it, it’s an addiction, the need to tell stories. If anything, my relationship with film has become more tense, more of a problem, because there is always that question: when will my time be up? Will this be the last film I make?...Perhaps this is the reason I haven’t developed any other facets of my life. Quite the opposite, I think I’ve cut back. So I’ve now reached the point where film is the only thing that makes me feel whole. Cinema is the only thing I have. It’s finished up being both the end and the means for me."