Roger Ebert Quotes:

To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.

source: - Roger Ebert (2011). “Life Itself: A Memoir”, p.291, Hachette UK

Topics: Unhappy, Crime, Joy To The World

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

source: - Roger Ebert (2010). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2011”, p.1500, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Wisdom, Believe, Civilization

Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.

Topics: Confused, Lying, Emotional, Never Lie, Confused Love

Every great film should seem new every time you see it.

source: - Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

Topics: Movie, Gambling, Film, Great Film

Praise without merit is more harmful than unearned criticism.

Topics: Criticism, Merit, Praise

When a girl says she likes you as a friend, what she means is: "Rather than have sex with you, I would prefer to lose you as a friend."

source: - Roger Ebert (2013). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007”, p.364, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Girl, Sex, Mean

I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people.

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Thinking, Ideas, People, Sidekicks

Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?

source: - Roger Ebert (1997). “Roger Ebert's Video Companion”, Andrews McMeel Pub

Topics: Freedom Of Speech, Use, Speech

I do not fear death. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.

Topics: Believe, Sides, Fear Of Death, Do Not Fear Death

Life always has an unhappy ending, but you can have a lot of fun along the way, and everything doesn't have to be dripping in deep significance.

source: - Roger Ebert (1987). “Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion”

Topics: Fun, Unhappy, Way, Unhappy Endings, Simple Pleasures

Dogs remember every favor you ever do for them and store those events in a memory bank titled Why My Human Is A God.

Topics: Dog, Memories, Events

Start. Don’t look back. If at the end it doesn’t meet your hopes, start again. Now you know more about your hopes.

Topics: Looks, Ends, Knows

Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.

source: - Roger Ebert (2016). “The Great Movies IV”, p.21, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Art, Powerful, People

No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.

source: - "A long column about the length of movies" by Eric Snider, www.mtv.com. July 13, 2011.

Topics: Long, Good Movie, Enough

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

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Glowing, Class, Generations

What every human being should do is eat a vegetarian diet based on whole foods. Period. That's it. Animal protein is bad for you. Dairy is bad for you. Forget the ads: Milk and eggs are bad for you.

source: - Roger Ebert (2011). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2012”, p.188, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Animal, Vegetarian Diet, Eggs, Whole Foods

Never marry anyone you could not sit next to during a three-day bus trip.

source: - Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, p.374, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Inspirational, Marriage, Men

It is reckless to make broad generalizations about any group of people.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.589, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: People, Groups, Reckless, Generalization

I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me.

source: - Roger Ebert (2011). “Life Itself: A Memoir”, p.4, Hachette UK

Topics: Plot, Audio, Remember

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.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.483, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Dog, Grateful, Able

There are two things you can't argue in film: comedy and eroticism. If something doesn't make you laugh, no one can tell you why it's funny, and it's difficult to reason someone out of an erection.

Topics: Two, Laughing, Comedy, Make You Laugh

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

Topics: Thinking, People, Prejudice, Susceptible, Ignorance And Prejudice

It is an interesting law of romance that a truly strong woman will choose a strong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. Strength demands intelligence, intelligence demands stimulation, and weakness is boring. It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn't really care.

Topics: Strong Women, Law, Interesting

Movies are not about moving, but about whether to move.

source: - Roger Ebert (2002). “The Great Movies”, p.16, Crown Archetype

Topics: Moving

When I go to the movies, one of my strongest desires is to be shown something new. I want to go to new places, meet new people, have new experiences. When I see Hollywood formulas mindlessly repeated, a little something dies inside of me: I have lost two hours to boors who insist on telling me stories I have heard before.

source: - Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: New Experiences, Two, People, New Places

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.

Topics: Your Side, Mind, Sides

Life is made up of challenges that cannot be solved but only accepted.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.547, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Challenges, Life Is, Accepted

The moment a man stops dreaming is the moment he petrifies inside.

source: - Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007”, p.23, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Dream, Men, Moments

What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable.

Topics: Wisdom, Believe, Two, Teachable

One, don't wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it's going?

source: - "Life Before ‘Life Itself:’ Ebert’s Pre-Critic Life in His Own Words" by Steve Greene, www.indiewire.com. April 5, 2013.

Topics: Inspiration, Two, Waiting

In the vast majority of movies, everything is done for the audience. We are cued to laugh or cry, be frightened or relieved; Hitchcock called the movies a machine for causing emotions in the audience. Bresson (and Ozu) take a different approach. They regard, and ask us to regard along with them, and to arrive at conclusions about their characters that are our own. This is the cinema of empathy.

source: - Roger Ebert (2008). “The Great Movies II”, p.37, Crown Archetype

Topics: Character, Laughing, Empathy, Different Approach

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

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "Think Like a Man", www.rogerebert.com. April 18, 2012.

Topics: Book, Romance, Advice

Sometimes you only need to have a few words with a person to know you would like to have many more.

Topics: Relationship, Needs, Few Words

What you see is so much less than what you get.

We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls. They allow us to enter other minds, not simply in the sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it.

source: - Roger Ebert (2002). “The Great Movies”, p.11, Crown Archetype

Topics: Wall, Character, Space, Identifying

How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall, about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.

Topics: Stars, Queens, Night, Star Gazing, Nightfall

It's hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.

source: - Roger Ebert (2013). “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”, p.99, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Fun, Kind, Found, Bad Movies

We all are born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.

Topics: Dream, Journey, Civilization, Packages

To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!", www.rogerebert.com. May 25, 1990.

Topics: Life, Jobs, Believe, Problems In Life

Just write, get better, keep writing, keep getting better. It's the only thing you can control.

Topics: Writing, Get Better, Things You Can Control

I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.

source: - "Life Itself: A Memoir". Book by Roger Ebert, September 2011.

Topics: Believe, Done, Littles

And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don't just try to shut them up.

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Thinking, People, Trying, Celebrate Life, Different Opinions

We laugh, that we may not cry.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert”, p.69, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Laughing, May, Cry

The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001'' is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “33 Movies to Restore Your Faith in Humanity: Ebert's Essentials”, p.120, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Artist, Space, Essence, Space Odyssey, Stanley

A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the room.

Topics: Anchors, Important, Rooms

Political correctness is the fascism of the 90's, it is this rigid feeling that you have to keep your ideas and your way of looking at things within very narrow boundaries or else you'll offend someone. Certainly one of the purposes of journalism is to challenge just that way of thinking, and certainly one of the purposes of criticism is to break boundaries, that's also one of the purposes of art.

Topics: Art, Thinking, Ideas, Purpose Of Art

Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other 'isms' grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity.

Topics: Children, School, Ideas, Tribalism, Different Nationalities

I was indeed a snob, if you agree with this definition: 'A person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.' I do believe that. Not superior to all other people, but to some, most probably including those who think Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is a great film. That is not simply ego on my part. It is a faith that after writing and teaching about films for more than 40 years, my tastes are more evolved than those of a fanboy.

Topics: Revenge, Believe, Teaching

I began to realize that I had tended to avoid some people because of my instant conclusions about who they were and what they would have to say. I discovered that everyone, speaking honestly and openly, had important things to tell me.

Topics: People, Important, Realizing

That's what fantasies are for, to help us imagine that things are better than they are.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.414, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Helping, Fantasy, Imagine

As I swim through the summer tide of vulgarity, I find that's what I'm looking for: Movies that at least feel affection for their characters. Raunchy is OK. Cruel is not.

source: - Roger Ebert (2000). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2001”, Andrews McMeel Pub

Topics: Summer, Character, Swim

Art is the closest we can come to understanding how a stranger really feels.

source: - "11th Hour", Colorado Public Television, 1994.

Topics: Art, Understanding, Stranger

It is not enough for a movie to be righteous. It must also be watchable.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.282, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Enough, Righteous

One of the gifts one movie lover can give another is the title of a wonderful film they have not yet discovered

Topics: Giving, Titles, Lovers

We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try.

source: - "Life Itself: A Memoir". Book by Roger Ebert, September 2011.

Topics: Joy, Trying, World, Joy To The World

Fellini was more in love with breasts than Russ Meyer, more wracked with guilt than Ingmar Bergman, more of a flamboyant showman than Busby Berkeley... Amarcord seems almost to flow from the camera, as anecdotes will flow from one who has told them often and knows they work. This was the last of his films made for no better reason than Fellini wanted to make it.

Topics: Guilt, Cameras, Anecdotes, Berkeley, Flamboyant

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica.

source: - Roger Ebert (2013). “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”, p.145, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Cannes Film Festival, Satanic, Festivals, St Peter, Cannes

People never think of themselves as choosing to be politically correct. They simply think in the way that they do.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.362, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Thinking, People, Way

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

Topics: Sweet, Blessed, First Love

I am utterly bored by celebrity interviews. Most celebrities are devoid of interest.

source: - "Playboy Interview: Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert". Interview With Lawrence Grobel, reprints.longform.org. January 1991.

Topics: Bored, Interviews, Interest

Many really good films allow us to empathize with other lives.

Topics: Film, Good Films

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.

Topics: Debt, Cash, Wealth

If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Hollywood product has been skewed toward violence and vulgar teen comedy.

source: - Interview with Chris Neumer, www.stumpedmagazine.com.

Topics: Teenager, Mean, Hollywood

My motto: 'No good movie is depressing. All bad movies are depressing.'

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.282, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Depressing, Good Movie, Motto, Bad Movies

There are often lists of the great living male movie stars. How often do you see the name of Nicolas Cage? He should always be up there. He's daring and fearless in his choice of roles, and unafraid to crawl out on a limb, saw it off and remain suspended in air.

source: - Roger Ebert (2010). “The Great Movies III”, p.14, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Stars, Air, Names

Sometimes, it's all about the casting.

source: - "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Topics: Casting, Sometimes

In thinking about 'depressing movies,' many people don't realize that all bad movies are depressing, and no good movies are.

source: - Roger Ebert (2011). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2012”, p.724, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Depressing, Thinking, People

Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.

Topics: Thinking, Curiosity, Calling, Unexamined Life, Life Is Not Worth Living

Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.

source: - "Pearl Harbor" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. May 25, 2001.

Topics: Two, Grace, Vision, Special Effects, Surprise Attacks

We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.

source: - Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Falling In Love, Stars, Real

Time is what the depressed and panicked lack.

I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.

source: - "Roger Ebert: 'I'm an optimistic person'" by Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. November 5, 2011.

Topics: Thinking, States, Born

Dr. Leonard Shlain, chairman of laparoscopic surgery at California Pacific Medical Center, said they took some four and five year-olds and gave them video games and asked them to figure out how to play them without instructions. Then they watched their brain activity with real-time monitors. At first, when they were figuring out the games, he said, the whole brain lit up. But by the time they knew how to play the games, the brain went dark, except for one little point.

Topics: Real, Dark, Years

There is a movie called “Fargo” playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see “Little Indian, Big City,” I will never let you read one of my reviews again.

source: - "Little Indian, Big City" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. March 22, 1996.

Topics: Cities, Littles, Fargo

A film like Hoop Dreams is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and makes us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert”, p.184, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Dream, Thinking, Giving

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.

source: - Roger Ebert (2008). “The Great Movies II”, p.278, Crown Archetype

Topics: Philosophical, Delight, Care, Great Philosophical

Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way.

source: - Roger Ebert (2009). “Your Movie Sucks”, p.21, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Long, Earth, Way

Why is it that English, drama and music teachers are most often recalled as our mentors and inspirations? Maybe because artists are rarely members of the popular crowd.

Topics: Teacher, Drama, Inspiration, Music Teacher

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

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Movie, Class, Actors

If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didn't.

Topics: Asks, Ifs

Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs.

source: - Roger Ebert (2011). “Life Itself: A Memoir”, p.291, Hachette UK

Topics: Kindness, Political, Belief, Political Beliefs

Yes, I was fat, but I dealt with it by simply never thinking about it. It is useful, when you are fat, to have a lot of other things to think about.

Topics: Beauty, Thinking, Fats

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.

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: People, Energy, Want, First Amendment

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Two, Numbers, People, Vicarious

I have always had my doubts about any form of divine intervention in sports contests. The power of prayer may be remarkable in many other arenas, but why should God want my team to win instead of the other side? Isn't it insulting to request God to even take an interest in baseball?

source: - Roger Ebert (1995). “Roger Ebert's video companion: 1996 edition”

Topics: Sports, Baseball, Prayer, Divine Intervention

My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

source: - "I do not fear death" by Roger Ebert, www.salon.com. September 15, 2011.

Topics: Memories, Home, Paris, Souvenirs, Eiffel

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

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.74, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Bullying, Children, Hate

I know as a critic I'm required to have a well-armored heart. I must be a cynical wise guy to show my great sophistication. No pushover, me.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.133, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Wise, Heart, Cynical, Pushovers, Wise Guy

One sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and producing one of a film's defining moments.

source: - Roger Ebert (2016). “The Great Movies IV”, p.81, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Actors, Defining Moments, Film, Great Actors

If you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear. Movies are hardly ever about what they seem to be about. Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may be.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert”, p.388, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Silly, People, Profound

I am, beneath everything else, a fan. I was fixed in this mode as a young boy and am awed by people who take the risks of performance.

source: - "Roger Ebert’s Good Life" by Richard Brody, www.newyorker.com.

Topics: Boys, People, Risk

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

source: - Roger Ebert (2000). “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”, p.207, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Philosophy, Book, Thinking, Literature History

We exist to have our wealth moved up the economic chain out of our reach.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.577, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Wealth, Economic, Chains

I have no fear of death. We all die. I consider my remaining days to be like money in the bank. When it is all gone, I will be repossessed.

Topics: Gone, No Fear, Fear Of Death

Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.

source: - "Critical Eye". Yahoo! Internet Life, September 1998.

Topics: Reading, Library Research, Rats, Libraries And Reading, Libraries Books And Reading

It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.

Topics: Film

Movies that encourage empathy are more effective than those that objectify problems.

Topics: Empathy, Problem

Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born. It immediately becomes more than a series of events and is transformed into a world with its own rules, in which everything is driven by emotions and desires as convincing as they are magical.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.402, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Ideas, Mind, Desire

We are born into a box of time and space. We use words and communication to break out of it and to reach out to others.

source: - "Computers let Roger Ebert be himself". TEDTalk Tuesdays, www.cnn.com. April 17, 2011.

Topics: Motivation, Communication, Inspiration

Dear Bill (O'Reilly)...I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician? That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!

Topics: Powerful, Reality, Bridges, Bill O Reilly

We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.

source: - Roger Ebert (2005). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2006”, p.339, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Wisdom, Mind, Limits

To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion.

source: - "Spoiling for 'Star Wars'" by Todd Leopold, www.cnn.com. May 19, 2005.

Topics: Passion, Writing, Cards, Greeting Card

Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.

Topics: Needs, News, World

The very fact of snow is such an amazement.

source: - Twitter post from Dec 4, 2010

Topics: Snow, Facts, Amazement

No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11. Such subjects overwhelm art.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.160, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Art, Holocaust, Catharsis

Gene [Siskel] often mentioned something François Truffaut once told him: the most beautiful sight in a movie theater is to walk down to the front, turn around, and look at the light from the screen reflected on the upturned faces of the members of the audience.

Topics: Beautiful, Light, Sight, Beautiful Sights

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject - unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.1, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Doubt, Vampire, Hunters, Vampire Hunter

Because of the rush of human knowledge, because of the digital revolution, I have a voice, and I do not need to scream.

source: - "Computers let Roger Ebert be himself", www.cnn.com. April 17, 2011.

Topics: Technology, Digital Revolution, Voice

I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.

Topics: Atheist, Night, Would Be, Awake At Night

Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives.

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "Cloud Atlas", www.rogerebert.com. October 24, 2012.

Topics: Clouds, Sky, Sailing, Castles In The Sky

The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length: More Movies That Suck”, p.175, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Thinking, Waiting, Agonizing, Bad Movies

When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be.

source: - "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" by Chris Jones, www.esquire.com. February 16, 2010.

Topics: Writing, Problem, Invisible

Many thrillers follow such reliable formulas that you can look at what's happening and guess how much longer a film has to run.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.240, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Running, Looks, Film

Grave of the Fireflies is an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation... It belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made.

source: - "Sentai Filmworks Bringing 'grave Of The Fireflies' Back To DVD" by Charles Webb, www.mtv.com. December 2, 2011.

Topics: Powerful, War, Firefly, Rethinking

When we go to the movies, we identify with the characters we see. That's why we go to the movies; we have a voyeuristic experience; we have an out of the body experience. The screen is more real than our thoughts are at the moment we are looking at the film and we place ourselves in the place of the people on the screen, and when they behave nobly, it makes us feel noble, when they are sad and when they have lost love, we feel sad; we can identify with that.

Topics: Real, Lost Love, Character

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.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.597, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Hate, Stupid, Comedy

To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

source: - Roger Ebert (2005). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2006”, p.734, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Dream, Spring, Secret, Rewind, Escalators

I do suspect my star ratings average too high. But, of course, star ratings are ridiculous. I'm stuck with them.

source: - Interview With Keith Phipps, film.avclub.com. October 4, 2011.

Topics: Stars, Average, Ridiculous

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.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.300, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Essentials, Actors, Way, Young Ones

When I had been a film critic for ten minutes, I treated Doris Day as a target for cheap shots. I have learned enough to say today that the woman was remarkably gifted.

Topics: Film Critics, Target, Today, Cheap Shots, Dori

It is strange how the romances of the teenage years retain a poignancy all through life - how a girl who turns you down when you're 16 retains an aura in your memory even long after you, and she, have ceased to be who you were then. I attended my high school reunion a couple of weeks ago and discovered, in the souvenir booklet assembled by the reunion committee, that one of the girls in my class had a crush on me all those years ago. I would have given a great deal to have had that information at the time.

source: - Roger Ebert (1997). “Roger Ebert's Video Companion”, Andrews McMeel Pub

Topics: Crush, Girl, Teenage, Poignancy, Teenage Years

The movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene... The movie is vulgar? Vulgarity is when we don't laugh. When we laugh, it's merely human nature.

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "American Wedding", www.rogerebert.com. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Vulgarity Is, Hygiene, Laughing, Decorum

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.

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Good Questions, Might, Reason

Nothing could be more boring than an absolutely accurate movie about the law.

Topics: Law, Boring, Accurate

In my reviews, I feel it's good to make it clear that I'm not proposing objective truth, but subjective reactions; a review should reflect the immediate experience.

source: - Interview With Keith Phipps, film.avclub.com. October 4, 2011.

Topics: Objective Truth, Reactions, Should

This sucks on so many levels." Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought.

source: - Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, p.340, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Character, Special, Jason, Special Effects, Character Development

It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His editor cabled back: Forget flood. Interview God.

source: - Roger Ebert (2013). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007”, p.297, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Kids, Editors, Missing

From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama.

Topics: Drama, Doctors, Cinema

While I am usually in despair when a movie abandons its plot for a third act given over entirely to action, I have no problem with the way Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ends, because it has been pointing toward this ending, hinting about it, preparing us for it, all the way through. What a glorious movie.

source: - Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, p.274, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Secret, Despair, Plot

The movie "Ed Wood," about the worst director of all time, was made to prepare us for "Stargate."

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "Stargate", www.rogerebert.com. October 28, 1994.

Topics: Directors, Woods, Made

The Golden Thumb is not as good as the Oscar, but it is a lot of fun.

source: - "A Film Critic's Windy City Home". Interview with Edward Lewine, www.nytimes.com. February 13, 2005.

Topics: Fun, Thumbs, Oscars

Because we can engineer genetics, because we can telecast real lives-of course we must, right? But are these good things to do? The irony is, the people who will finally answer that question will be the very ones produced by the process.

source: - Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Real, Science, People

It is comforting to think that we can love so powerfully that fate itself wheels and turns at the command of our souls.

source: - Roger Ebert (2000). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2001”, Andrews McMeel Pub

Topics: Fate, Thinking, Soul

Most people choose movies that provide exactly what they expect, and tell them things they already know. Others are more curious. We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.

source: - Roger Ebert (2005). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2006”, p.339, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: People, Mind, Limits

No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.

source: - "Roger Ebert's Video Companion". Book by Roger Ebert, 1998.

Topics: Roles, Dean, Supporting Roles

I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting.

source: - "I do not fear death" by Roger Ebert, www.salon.com. September 15, 2011.

Topics: Laughter, Grateful, Interesting

There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.

Topics: Guarantees, Return, Oblivion, Astonishing

Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced — because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival.

source: - Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Opportunity, Reality, Imagination, Missed Opportunity

The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.

Topics: Muse, Creation, Process

Lebanon was at one time known as a nation that rose above sectarian hatred; Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. All of that was blown apart by senseless religious wars, financed and exploited in part by those who sought power and wealth. If women had been in charge, would they have been more sensible? It's a theory.

Topics: Religious, War, Paris, Beirut, Religious Wars

Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson star. I neglected to mention that, maybe because I was trying to place them in this review's version of the Witness Protection Program. If I were taken off the movie beat and assigned to cover the interior design of bowling alleys, I would have some idea of how they must have felt as they made this film.

source: - Roger Ebert (2009). “Your Movie Sucks”, p.141, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Stars, Taken, Ideas, Bowling Alleys

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.

Topics: Character, Hollywood, Film

Why has Scandinavia been producing such good thrillers? Maybe because their filmmakers can't afford millions for CGI and must rely on cheaper elements like, you know, stories and characters.

Topics: Character, Stories, Elements, Scandinavia, Cgi

CROUCHING TIGER is nevertheless a gloriously big epic, starring the Hong Kong action stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh in a visionary adventure where the characters seem set free from the force of gravity.

Topics: Stars, Character, Adventure

We are poor mortals, but it dreams to us that we can fly.

source: - Roger Ebert (2010). “The Great Movies III”, p.150, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Dream, Poor, Mortals

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.

source: - Interview With Chris Neumer, www.stumpedmagazine.com.

Topics: People, Way, Reviews

Samurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy.

source: - Roger Ebert (2016). “The Great Movies IV”, p.90, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Challenges, Tragedy, Needs

My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may - need is the word I use - to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.

Topics: War, Book, One Day, Finnegans Wake, Second World War

Cinema, for me, has always been something like music composed with photographic images.

source: - Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

Topics: Cinema

If there is such a thing as a lock on an Oscar nomination, ... Hoffman has one.

source: - Roger Ebert (2013). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007”, p.816, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Locks, Oscars, Nominations

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

Topics: Real, Clue, Hitchcock

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.

source: - Interview With Chris Neumer, www.stumpedmagazine.com.

Topics: Eye, Cutting, Long, Citizen Kane

Since any reasonable person would choose a Mac over a PC, Apple's market share provides us with an accurate reading of the percentage of reasonable people in our society.

Topics: Reading, Apples, People

Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immediately what could have happened, and that it never will.

source: - Roger Ebert (2005). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2006”, p.242, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Two, People, Sometimes

The Academy is paranoid about its image.

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Paranoid, Academy

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.

Topics: Jobs, Thinking, Giving, Purpose Of Education

Going to a movie so you won't be offended is like eating potato chips made with Olestra; you avoid the dangers of the real thing, but your insides fill up with synthetic runny stuff.

source: - Roger Ebert (2002). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2003”, p.473, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Real, Potato Chips, Stuff, Synthetic

Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer , according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue.

source: - Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Epic, Credit, Iliad, Epic Poems

If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that you never say no to an old gypsy woman with a blind eye and leprous fingernails.

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "Drag Me to Hell", www.rogerebert.com. June 3, 2009.

Topics: Eye, Gypsy, I've Learned, Blind Eyes

Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. Armageddon is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

source: - Roger Ebert (2013). “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”, p.22, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Eye, Cutting, Common Sense, Trailers, Charging

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

source: - Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Stars, Speaks Out, People, Hollywood Stars

In these days of high-tech video games, it's remarkable that kids once got incredibly thrilled while pushing little metal racing cars around a cardboard track: The toy car was yours, and you invested it with importance and enhanced it with fantasy and pitied it because it was small, like you were. Such games were weapons against the ennui of endless Saturdays.

source: - Roger Ebert (2006). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007”, p.801, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Kids, Games, Track

I am as fond of colorful language as anyone, but I try not to inflict it upon strangers. I suspect many people sense they should have better manners, and need only a nudge. In high school, I was addressed for the first time in my life as "Mister Ebert" by Stanley Hynes, an English teacher, and his formality transformed his classroom into a place where a certain courtliness prevailed.

Topics: Life, Teacher, School, Formality

It is all very well and good for Linda Lovelace, the star of the movie, to advocate sexual freedom; but the energy she brings to her role is less awesome than discouraging. If you have to work this hard at sexual freedom, maybe it isn't worth the effort.

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "Deep Throat", www.rogerebert.com. March 6, 1973.

Topics: Stars, Effort, Energy

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

Topics: Film, Hell, Broke

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.

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Responsibility, Speaks Out, Ideas, Limiting Freedom Of Expression

My newspaper job … is my identity.

Topics: Jobs, Identity, Newspapers

[Alan Berg's] memory haunts many people, even those who never heard him on the radio, because his death could be read as a message: Be cautious, be prudent, be bland, never push anybody, never say what you really think, offer yourself as a hostage to the weirdos even before they make the first move. These days, a lot of people are opposed to the newfound popularity of 'trash television,' and no doubt they are right, and the hosts of these shows are shameless controversy-mongers. But at least they are not intimidated. Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?

Topics: Memories, Moving, Thinking

In Blue Crush , we meet three Hawaiian surfers who work as hotel maids, live in a grotty rental, and are raising the kid sister of one of them. Despite this near-poverty, they look great; there is nothing like a tan and a bikini to overcome class distinctions.

source: - Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, p.76, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Crush, Kids, Blue, Hawaiians, Class Distinction

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

Topics: Middle East, Notion, Regions

Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. Eiko Ishioka's costume designs alone deserve an Oscar nomination. "They weren't at all historically accurate," grumbled a woman in the elevator after the sneak preview, as if lots of documentation exists about the wardrobes of the gods. She added: "I guess that's what we deserve for using free tickets we got at a Blackhawks game.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.276, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Games, Design, Doubt, Blackhawks, Preview

There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.

Topics: Summer, Autumn, Night, Old Trees, Summer Nights

People read the papers not in the hopes of learning something new, but in the expectation of being told what they already know. This is a form of living death. Its apotheosis is the daily poll in USA Today, which informs us what percentage of a small number of unscientifically selected people called a toll number to vote on questions that cannot possibly be responded to with a yes or no.

source: - Roger Ebert, David Bordwell (2017). “Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert: Second Edition”, p.432, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Learning Something New, Small Numbers, Media, Yes Or No, Apotheosis

And the sexes eyeing each other uneasily, for nothing is easier for a teenager to imagine than rejection.

Topics: Sex, Teenager, Rejection

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

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.181, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Rights, Lacking Something, Lacking

The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned out by the noise.

source: - Interview with Chris Neumer, www.stumpedmagazine.com.

Topics: Ambition, Noise, Made

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

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.403, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Fantasy, Goodness, Happens

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

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: People, Facts, Rich

Crowds can be frightening. They have a way of impressing the low, base taste upon their members. Watching the way thousands of people in his audience could not think for themselves, could not find the courage to allow their ordinary feelings of decency and taste to prevail, I understood better how demagogues are possible.

source: - Roger Ebert (2013). “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”, p.110, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Thinking, People, Feelings

Catholic theology believes that God gave man free will, and you can't give somebody free will and then send in a play from the sidelines.

source: - Interview With Brit Hume, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Believe, Men, Play, Sidelines

"The Lucky One" is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Readers don't read his books because they're true, but because they ought to be true.

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "The Lucky One", www.rogerebert.com. April 18, 2012.

Topics: Book, Heart, Romance, Romance Novel, Nicholas Spark

A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.

source: - "Diagnosing 'Emily Rose'" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. September 18, 2005.

Topics: Depressing, Men, Numbers, Blind Man

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.

source: - Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: Movie, Moving, College, Going To College

'Grand Illusion' and 'Rules of the Game' are routinely included on lists of the greatest films, and deserve to be.

source: - Roger Ebert (2016). “The Great Movies IV”, p.78, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Games, Lists, Film, Rules Of The Game

One hopeful sign that the filmmakers can learn and grow is that the sequel does not contain a single pie, if you know what I mean.

source: - Roger Ebert (2003). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2004”, p.24, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Mean, Pie, Hopeful

All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.

source: - "Life Itself : A Memoir". Book by Roger Ebert, 2011.

Topics: Tolerance, Agree

"Dirty Love" wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent... I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is.

source: - Roger Ebert's review of "Dirty Love", www.rogerebert.com. September 22, 2005.

Topics: Dirty, Levels, Film, Pitiful, Badness

Last year, I reviewed a nine-hour documentary about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through The Frighteners.

source: - Roger Ebert (1997). “Roger Ebert's Video Companion”

Topics: Years, Nine, Lasts, Yaks

I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.

source: - Roger Ebert (2009). “Your Movie Sucks”, p.26, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: One Day, Directors, Bunnies

The idea that a book can advise a woman how to capture a man is touchingly naive. Books advising men how to capture a woman are far less common, perhaps because few men are willing to admit to such a difficulty. For both sexes, I recommend a good novel, offering scenarios you might learn from, if only because they reflect a lot of doubt.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.592, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Sex, Book, Men

The children of Birmingham did not really die in the State of Alabama, however, because Alabama is a state of mind, and in the minds of the [white] men who rule Alabama, those children had never lived [...] their blood is on so many hands, that history will weep in the telling...and it is not new blood. It is old, so very old.

Topics: Children, Men, White Man, Many Hands

You slide down in your seat and make yourself comfortable. On the screen in front of you, the movie image appears—enormous and overwhelming. If the movie is a good one, you allow yourself to be absorbed in its fantasy, and its dreams become part of your memories

source: - Roger Ebert (1985). “A Kiss Is Still a Kiss”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Dream, Memories, Slides

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.

source: - Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.33, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Book, Character, Superhero, Gridlock

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

Topics: People, Creative, Genius

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.

Topics: Party, Wife, Use, Good Values, Shorthand

Dice Rules is one of the most appalling movies I have ever seen. It could not be more damaging to the career of Andrew Dice Clay if it had been made as a documentary by someone who hated him. The fact that Clay apparently thinks this movie is worth seeing is revealing and sad, indicating that he not only lacks a sense of humor, but also ordinary human decency.

source: - Roger Ebert (2013). “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”, p.109, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Thinking, Careers, Clay

I'll tell you, I think that the Internet has provided an enormous boost to film criticism by giving people an opportunity to self publish or to find sites that are friendly.

source: - Interview With Chris Neumer, www.stumpedmagazine.com.

Topics: Opportunity, Thinking, Self, Film Criticism

At the end of the day, some authors will endure and most, including some very good ones, will not. Why do I think reading is important? It is such an effective medium between mind and mind. We think largely in words. A medium made only of words doesn't impose the barrier of any other medium. It is naked and unprotected communication. That's how you get pregnant. May you always be so.

Topics: Communication, Reading, Thinking

3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches.

source: - "Roger Ebert On Why 3D Movies Suck" by Gillian Reagan, www.businessinsider.com. April 29, 2010.

Topics: Crazy, Suicidal, Perfectly Good, Stampede

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.

source: - Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

Topics: People, Desire, Needs, Good Films, Independent Film