Quotations: Cinema, Acting, Theater

Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater. ~Roman Polanski


Acting: An art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing. ~Ralph Richardson


Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. ~Alfred Hitchcock


Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. ~John LeCarre


The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder. ~Alfred Hitchcock


A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it. ~Alfred Hitchcock


A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself. ~Don Marquis


Never judge a book by its movie. ~J.W. Eagan


I've spent several years in Hollywood, and I still think the movie heroes are in the audience. ~Wilson Mizner


Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. ~Jessamyn West


Most horror movies are certainly that. ~Brendan Francis


You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally he played my husband. If he had lived I'm sure I would have played his mother. That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older. ~Lillian Gish


What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out. ~Agnes Repplier


What I've learned is that life is too short and movies are too long. ~Denis Leary


There are only three ages for women in Hollywood - Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy. ~Goldie Hawn


Acting is like a Halloween mask that you put on. ~River Phoenix


Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay home and see bad television for nothing? ~Samuel Goldwyn


The chief difference between horror fans and science fiction fans lies in why they won't walk backwards. A horror fan won't walk backwards because he knows he'll be knifed by a madman. A science fiction fan won't walk backwards because he knows he'll step on the cat. ~Aaron Allston


It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkies instead of the other way around. ~Mary Pickford


A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good. ~T.S. Eliot, New York Post, 22 September 1963


Why do critics make such an outcry against tragicomedies? is not life one? ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Rated G is nobody gets the girl. PG is the good guy gets the girl. R is the bad guy gets the girl. XXX is everybody gets the girl. ~Author Unknown


[M]ovie-making is the process of turning money into light. All they have at the end of the day is images flickering on a wall. ~John Boorman, Money into Light, 1985


There's no thief like a bad movie. ~Sam Ewing


If I find a film dull, I find it infinitely more entertaining to watch the scratches. ~Norman McLaren