Now I see that all relationships are virtual, even those that take place in person. Whether we use our bodies or a keyboard, it all comes down to two minds crying out from their solitude.
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.
Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.
Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film.
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.
I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class.
Oh, here comes Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Jimmy Smits!
I’ve been told that I am evil. I’ve been told that I am behind the persecution of millions of Americans. That I have encouraged hate toward gays. I’ve received both very brief and obscene messages, and very long and literate messages that tell me a vote for Crash was vote for homophobia.
And the sexes eyeing each other uneasily, for nothing is easier for a teenager to imagine than rejection.
We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls.
Movies are not about moving, but about whether to move.
When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.
There’s nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.
Many really good films allow us to empathize with other lives.
It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.
It is hard enough to be good at all, but to be good in comedy speaks for your character.
If you can act as if something is true, in a sense that makes it true.
I’m told we movie critics praise movies that are long and boring.
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.
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.