Top 39 Quotes & Sayings by Ol Parker

As I get older, I find the things that I thought would be sorted by now aren't. The idea of writing stuff like that for a much older generation was incredibly appealing.

There's a sports saying, if you aren't playing offense, you're playing defense, so if you are coming back for a sequel not be better but you have to aim higher and bring something else back in to the mix.

It's always tricky when someone who's not used to it volunteers to be an extra and you want to go, 'Listen, you're going to be sitting there for a long time.'

It's the nicest thing when you're constantly surprised by your partner.

'Dancing Queen' was the hardest to pull off, all those boats and all those people dancing around the street with boats coming around the corner.

The greatest moment of all was her on set, and she said, 'Would you mind if you change the order of the phrase?' Maggie Smith asking me if I could change the line, asking politely, using my name!

I have two girls and one is now nearly a teenager - it is terrifying.

The trajectory of most movies is that you start off writing a sensitive movie about a couple in their 40's getting divorced, and then, three years later, you look at each other on set while you're making a film about lesbian cheerleaders. You're like, 'How did that happen?!'

I hired people who would help me, you know, like a director of photography who wouldn't blind me with jargon about ratios and pull-downs.

Sequels are hard. What people want is to see the first film again for the first time and that simply isn't possible.

Bill Nighy has an idiosyncratic delivery.

Richard Curtis has an encyclopedic knowledge of ABBA, which defeats even mine.

The primary relationship on a film, where possible, should be between the director and writer.

I wrote a film for Tom Hanks and I wrote two films for Paul Greengrass that didn't actually happen. The paradox is that the bigger the film you write, the less likely it is to happen.

'Waterloo' was probably my favorite. That was enormous fun and we laughed a lot.

Thandie has no interest in race. She thinks it's just a Freudian concept by definition, and there's more genetic difference between a Kenyan and a Ugandan than there is between a Kenyan and a Norwegian... she believes entirely that nationality is nothing but accident.

You can't let movies get in the way of your life.

These are cynical times. Some of the romcoms I thought worked best in recent years were '500 Days of Summer,' 'Celeste and Jesse Forever' and 'Like Crazy,' all of which reject the standard happy-ever-after formula.

Being a teenager anyway is incredibly intense and every moment is invested with ferocious importance.

I mean, movies need distraction.

Before you turn 40 you think, 'everyone else is going to die, but not me,' then you realize death is certain for everyone.

I think films are a really small target. They're really hard to make, and they're a really tiny target.

The structure and formula are now so well-known that it's become very hard for the film-maker not to commit the cardinal sin: letting the audience get ahead of the film. So it takes some real sparkle - of which I thought 'Man Up' had plenty, especially in the writing - to keep the viewer enjoying a by-now predictable journey.

The other night my daughter shouted: 'What's that flying out of the window? It's the rules!' So that's how we roll.

I wrote the 'Marigold Hotel' series and with the first one, people hated it in the U.K. but in America they really liked it.

It's the easiest thing in the world, when you're 80, to not go to India to make a movie.

There is a scene that I wrote with the line, 'It's a terrible day when a man's daughter brings a boy home for the first time.' I'll never be ready for it, I would like to stop my children growing, I don't know how to handle it.

I wouldn't make the film that was an hour and half progression from sadness to despair. I'm hugely optimistic.

And Cher, obviously, can never do anything other than go for it. She's all in.

'It could be better' is the only thing that anyone should write in the margins of their own script.

I just did what any writer does, tried to listen to the characters, whether they're 18 or 80.

I have no goals or ambitions whatsoever.

Look, I'd take a suggestion from my grandmother if I thought it would improve a film I was writing.

I guess if you try to write with honesty and emotional truth, then that will resonate no matter what the age of the viewer.

I wanted to write about love at first sight because I fell in love at first sight.

You can only shoot in India for three months a year, otherwise it's very inhospitable.

I have a brilliant memory of being driven back to school when 'Super Trouper' was number one in the charts in 1980. When it came on the radio my mum just drove right past the school gates! When you're 11 years old and meant to be going back to boarding school, that's a great feeling.

Meryl's Donna embodied the spirit of ABBA and 'Mamma Mia!' in the first film.

Cher can play Meryl's daughter, for all I'm concerned. Or her great-grandmother. She exists separate from time.