Roger Ebert Quotes - Page 12

Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself entertained. It gives you a better chance of an interesting job.

And yet, even so, there is a way to find happiness. That is to be curious about all of the interlocking events that add up to our lives. To notice connections. To be amused or perhaps frightened by the ways things work out. If the universe is indifferent, what a consolation that we are not.

James Cameron's films have always been distinguished by ground-breaking technical excellence.

Someone once said the fundamental reason we get married is because have a universal human need for a witness.

It's strange: We leave the movie having enjoyed its conclusion so much that we almost forgot our earlier reservations. But they were there, and they were real.

It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. That's why writing on the Internet has become a lifesaver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression.

I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class. I begin to feel like most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don't understand that it's the responsibility of the citizen to speak out.

A lot of people just go to movies that feed into their preexisting and not so noble needs and desires: They just go to action pictures, and things like that. But if you go to foreign films, if you go to documentaries, if you go to independent films, if you go to good films, you will become a better person because you will understand human nature better. Movies record human nature in a better way than any other art form, that's for sure.

A movie isn't good or bad based on its politics. It's usually good or bad for other reasons, though you might agree or disagree with its politics.

My favorite love scenes in movies don't involve passion, they involve nobility or sacrifice.

Marlon Brando is the most influential movie actor of the century.

[Marlon] Brando was the only guy who could step out of that shadow at the end of that movie and be worth the wait.

I felt it would to add a great deal to my legend for eccentricity.

What makes people interesting is the spirit that shines through.

Who wants to live in the present? It's such a limiting period compared to the past.

I just assume I'm right. Partially out of conviction and partially as a pose.

Improvisation is a weird word because we often think it means that you make things up out of whole cloth right there on the spot, and that's rarely the case in acting. You have to know who the character is, what the situation is and what is needed.

Film has become a marketed commodity, and the opportunities and audiences for art cinema have grown smaller. There is a general downturn in cultural literacy, perhaps because of television.

When I go to a great movie, I can live somebody else's life a little bit for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief.

It's easier to identify with loss than love, because we have had so much more experience of it.

Fight Club is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy - the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again.

Are vampires kinky? I didn't know.

I believe that young people wearing hoods, unless they are very young, can be frightening. What are they hiding? Why don't they want to come out into the light with the rest of us? They may be perfectly nice, but the hoods send an uncertain statement.

Nobody looks perfect. We have to find peace with the way we look and get on with life.

What in the world is a leave of presence? It means I am not going away.