Top 88 Roger Ebert Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.

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.

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.

It often strikes me that the actors in high school movies look too old.

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.

I believe that if, at the end of it all, 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.

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.

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

I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip.

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

There must be a better reason to have a baby than to provide a plot point in a rom-com. Don’t you think?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

‘ 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.

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

Are vampires kinky? I didn’t know.

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.

To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

It does seem true that a lot of people will do anything, however humiliating, for fame.

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

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.

The Academy is paranoid about its image.

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.

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.

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.

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

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

There’s nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.

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

Most of us do not consciously look at movies.

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.

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.

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

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

‘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.

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

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.

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

Here’s how much I know about hockey. Mike Royko and I were in a tiny bar one winter night, and the radio kept reporting goals by the Blackhawks. I mentioned how frequently the team was scoring. ‘You’re listening to the highlights,’ Royko observed.

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.

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.

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

Not everyone needs to be slammed into a category and locked there.

We are the playthings of the gods.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

In the world of acting, many are thin but few are talented.