Screenwriters From The United States

"It seems like the better it gets, the more miserable people become. There’s never a technological advancement where people think, “Wow, we can finally do this!” … And I think a lot of it has to do with advertising. Americans have it constantly drilled into our heads, every fucking day, that we deserve everything to be perfect all the time."

"Credibility lasts about two cycles of bad material, and then you’ll probably never get it back. If you let people down, that’s really hard to come back from– harder than climbing from nothing to something, even."

"What comedy really is is connecting with a group of people, and just speaking at a heightened level without any barriers and saying things that are raw id, and having people really respond to it. You know, that’s really what it is, and that’s why there are people that I look at as comedy role models that aren’t comedians, like Muhammad Ali. The way he spoke to audiences and crowds and stuff, if you watch some of his preaching to Nation of Islam crowds? Hilarious, and amazing, like he knew who the people were. He said, “You know what the fuck I’m talking about!” and he explained it to them."

"That’s what being a parent is like. It’s like Platoon."

"I'd like to name my kid a whole phrase. You know, something like "Ladies and Gentlemen". That'll be a cool name for a kid. "This is my son, Ladies and Gentlemen!" Then, when he gets out of hand, I get to go, "Ladies and Gentlemen, please!""

"They charged me 15 dollars. That's how much it costs to only have 20 dollars."

"People say ‘my phone sucks.’ No it doesn’t! The shittiest cellphone in the world is a miracle. Your life sucks. Around the phone."

"There’s a huge amount of work that goes into placating a network in regular television. It’s literally 70% or 80% of your workload, is showing them the material, getting their notes and presenting it to them and making sure they weigh in. It’s a huge amount of work."

"I wanted to see the fucking score! What do you got to do that's so fucking important? You can't join the religious cult with me!"

"Hey, that last skit was written for a reason. If any of your buddies had fooled around with a sixty year old man, don't throw them out of your car, or you will die. Now, enjoy the rest of the album!"

"I've met Adam Sandler a couple of times and he's a nice guy, smart and personable. Considering what I've written about his movies, he could also be described as forgiving and tactful. What I cannot understand is why he has devoted his career to finding new kinds of obnoxious voices and the characters to go along with them."

"Paul Newman's half Jewish and Florence Henderson's half, too Put them together, What a fine looking Jew!"

"The film is exhilarating to watch because Sandler, liberated from the constraints of formula, reveals unexpected depths as an actor. Watching this film, you can imagine him in Dennis Hopper roles. He has darkness, obsession and power."

"Tell your friend, Veronica It's time you celebrate Chanukah I hope I get a harmonica On this lovely, lovely Chanukah So drink your gin and tonic-ah And smoke your marijuani-khah If you really, really wanna-kah Have a happy, happy, happy, happy Chanukah Happy Chanukah"

"He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."

"The soldiers who faced one another along the Western Front were drawn from remarkably similar societies. On both sides there were industrial workers and farm labourers. On both sides there were aristocratic senior officers and middle-class junior officers. On both sides there were Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Anyone seeking fundamental differences of national character will look in vain in the records of the trenches. There could be no better illustration of this point than four of the finest novels written about the war by former soldiers - Henri Barbusse's Under Fire, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Frederic Manning's Middle Parts of Fortune and Emilio Lussu's Sardinian Brigade - which depict the experience of service in the ranks in almost interchangeable ways."

"A hospital alone shows what war is."

"I often sit over against myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle that calls itself to life has adapted itself even to this form. All other expressions live in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death;—it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct—it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought—it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude—it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness."

"No, we are not related. No, we are not related. Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more."

"But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?"

"A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends."

"Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started. "Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. "A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat." "Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls Kropp. "I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other—" "Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't feel myself offended." "Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to tramps like you." "Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh."

"I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me."

"It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is often brought on by small men. They are so much more energetic and uncompromising than the big fellows."

"We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers — we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals."

"We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."

"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."

"It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I might have been smashed to atoms, and in the open may survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier survives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck."

"Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik."

"It is when one is alone that one begins to observe Nature and to love her."

"He was only mildly startled that la strega was aware of his relationship with Giovanna: having lived most of his life in or near small southern villages, he would have been far more surprised if she had not."

"You are not mean. Cranky is different."

"Don't look back, and don't run. You must never run from anything immortal; it attracts their attention."

"There are no happy endings because nothing ends."

"The universe and Claudio Bianchi had agreed long ago to leave one another alone, and he was grateful, knowing very well how rare such a bargain is, and how rarely kept. And if he had any complaints, he made sure that neither the universe nor he himself ever knew of them."

"I am the only Unicorn there is? The Last? … That cannot be. Why would I be the last? What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished. We do not vanish. … There has never been a time without unicorns. We live forever! We are as old as the sky, old as the moon! We can be hunted, trapped; we can even be killed if we leave our forests, but we do not vanish. … Am I truly the last?"

"He gave them no titles; he never saw the point of doing so. If a poem did not tell you immediately what it was about, then, to Claudio Bianchi, it needed more help than a label was likely to provide."

"He sighed, telling himself that the inevitable is a great blessing to a man weary of making choices."

"Love is not an excuse for bad taste."

"The one delusion you never had in your life was the one about the permanence of happiness."

"What can I tell you, Laura? That I confused justice and revenge? People do that a great deal, and they always have."

"“I’ll tell you something. Once I was very fond of a poem by Emily Dickinson or somebody. I only remember one line of it, but it goes, ‘The soul selects her own society.’ I used to tell it to everybody. Once I quoted it to a friend of mine, and he said, ’Maybe, but the body gets thrown into bed with the goddamnedest people.’”"

"Funny that I should become such a great believer in justice. I always used to open my history courses by telling the students that if they expected to hear a series of movie scenarios, with the good guys winning in the end, they might as well all go home because not only didn’t the good guys win, but there weren’t any good guys."

"I am infected with life and will die of it in time."

"There is no such thing as abstract justice. There is such a thing as law. The difference should be apparent."

"He had foreseen every such change in his fortune, ignored it always, and called the refusal innocence."

"If I sound petty and malicious, it’s because I am."

"Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets."

"I was lost too. What else would I have been doing in Iowa?"

"The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. … Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."