Top 385 Quotes & Sayings by Roger Ebert - Page 2

We can't help identifying with the protagonist. It's coded in our movie-going DNA.

You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.

I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason.

It's rare to find a film that goes for broke and says, 'To hell with the consequences.'

We don't have a lot of class-conscious filmmaking.

Horror fans are a particular breed. They analyze films with such detail and expertise that I am reminded of the Canadian literary critic Northrup Frye, who approached literature with similar archetypal analysis.

In Hollywood, 'under development' means 'all I have is the title.'

I don't think Bush was legitimately elected President.

Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers.

Are vampires kinky? I didn't know.

It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.

I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class.

I've never found kicks to the groin particularly funny, although recent work in the genre of the buddy movie suggests audience research must prove me wrong.

All but a very few of us are in debt. We exist as entities who borrow money and spend the rest of our lives making interest payments on a debt tally that never seems to budge. Whatever wealth we have, in labor, property or cash, is suctioned to the top.

It is universally agreed that Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining.

The Academy is paranoid about its image.

Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius.

To die is one thing. How much worse to know that all the life that ever existed on this planet, and all it ever achieved, was to be obliterated?

Why are some people bullied? Because they are different. How? It doesn't matter.

I'm kind of glad the web is sort of totally anarchic. That's fine with me.

I remember when a Coke came in a six-ounce bottle, and delicious it was. Now it comes in sizes so big that I question how the human bladder can deal with the intake.

If you find an occupation you love and spend your entire life working at it, is that enough?

Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film.

All over the web there are some very good critics and it's become for people who are interested. It's become a very good way to get to reviews and involve yourself in discussions.

By going to the movies, and because of other things, too, going to college, making a wide variety of friends, moving around traveling, I became a lot more open-minded than the heritage I was born into might have suggested.

If there's anything I hate more than a stupid action comedy, it's an incompetent stupid action comedy. It's not so bad it's good. It's so bad it's nothing else but bad.

Open-heart surgery is now part of a typical life experience for many people. Folks talk casually about 'having a stent put in,' as if they had their tires rotated.

It's funny that there was so much disturbance about having a Catholic in the White House with Kennedy, and when we finally get a religion in the White House that's causing a lot of conflicts, and concerns, and disturbances for a lot of people, it's in the Bush Administration.

It's a good question, because 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.

Teaching prejudice to a child is itself a form of bullying. You've got to be taught to hate.

The right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.

The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His.

I like smart movies about smart people, and enjoy it when most of the facts are on the table and we can contemplate them together.

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.

The buried code of many American films has become: If I kill you, I have won and you have lost. The instinctive ethical code of traditional Hollywood, the code by which characters like James Stewart, John Wayne and Henry Fonda lived, has been lost.

Anyone who reads advice books about romance has one problem to begin with: bad taste in literature.

On this ancient and miraculous world, where such beautiful natural and living things have evolved, something has gone wrong when life itself is used as a manufacturing process.

I don't require movies to be about good people, and I don't reject screen violence.

You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.

It is hard enough to be good at all, but to be good in comedy speaks for your character.

One of the weapons Marvel used in its climb to comic-book dominance was a willingness to invent new characters at a dizzying speed. There are so many Marvel universes, indeed, that some superheroes do not even exist in one another's worlds, preventing gridlock.

Growing up, I missed the whole 'Three Stooges' thing. Either they weren't on the station in my hometown, or we hadn't bought a TV set yet, or they came to town too late for me. I'm pretty sure that at the right age, I would have loved them.

What a terrible thing it would be to be the Pope! What unthinkable responsibilities to fall on your shoulders at an advanced age! No privacy. No seclusion. No sin.

Reese Witherspoon is as cute as a button on Raggedy Ann's overalls, but irresistible raw sex appeal is not one of her qualities.

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 the fact is, most people are not going to be rich someday.

Who was the real Hitchcock? I interviewed him once and haven't a clue.

We think of first love as sweet and valuable, a blessed if hazardous condition.

If your religion doesn't respect the rights of other religions, it is lacking something.

If Hollywood stars speak out, so do all sorts of other people. Now Hollywood stars can get a better hearing.

Here's a notion: Peace in the Middle East would come about more easily if the region were governed by women.

When we're discussing who to invite to a dinner party, my wife Chaz and I sometimes use the shorthand, 'good value for money,' which indicates guests expected to be entertaining.

It's the same the world over. A Hollywood production comes to town, and the locals all turn movie crazy.

Time is what the depressed and panicked lack.

Dogs notice, they share, they draw conclusions, they like it when they're able to be of service and are touchingly grateful when they're praised.

Because I don't give the studios advanced quotes or an advanced look at my reviews. I think the readers deserve to read my reviews before the studios do.

I think that probably the - I don't give quotes to studios. They have to get those out of the paper or from television. So they wouldn't have had my quote opening day.

It's not often a thriller keeps me wound up as well as 'Headhunters' did. I knew I was being manipulated and didn't care. It was a pleasure to see how well it was being done.

Well, you know what, I'm 60 years old, and I've been interested in politics since I was on my daddy's knee. During the 1948 election, we were praying for Truman. I know a lot about politics.

What happens in a fantasy can be more involving than what happens in life, and thank goodness for that.