The best thing that can happen is for the theme to be nice and clear from the beginning.
All my brothers, my brothers-in-law, they’re always telling me what a good-hearted guy I am. You don’t get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough, you get to be a real professor of pain.
Artists don’t talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it’s stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.
I don’t know what’s good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about truth. I just want to know the momentary fact of things. Life isn’t good, or bad, or true. It’s merely factual. It’s sensual. It’s alive!
God save us from people who do the morally right thing. It’s always the rest of us who get broken in half.
I’m a human being, god-dammit. My life has value!
Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park.
Television is the menace that everyone loves to hate but can’t seem to live without.
Don’t think of it as art, think of it as work.
I’m not a great writer. I’m a great rewriter.
I’m not sentimental about war. I see nothing noble in widows.
I’m afraid to look in the mirror. I’m afraid I’m going to see an old lady with white hair, just like the old ladies in the park. Alittle bundle in a black shawl just waiting for the coffin.
Americans don’t want drama, especially good drama, they just want their boredom killed.
This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.
You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let’s not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment.
Television is democracy at its ugliest.
It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it’s always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.
Howard Beale is processed, instant God, and right now it looks like he might just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.
Ma, sooner or later there comes a point in a man’s life when he’s gotta face some facts. And one fact I’ve got to face is whateverit is women like, I ain’t got it.
You’re not such a dog as you think you are.