Roger Ebert Quotes

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

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.

Sometimes, it's all about the casting.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.

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.

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

Films like Fargo are why I love the movies.

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

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

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.

In the best of all possible worlds, directors would obsess about the quality of their storytelling, and not the details of their technical methods.

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.

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.

Steven Spielberg makes Minority Report with the newest digital technology; other directors seem to be trying to make their movies from it.

What's sad about not eating is the experience, whether at a family reunion or at midnight by yourself in a greasy spoon under the L tracks. The loss of dining, not the loss of food.

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.

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

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.

To die is one thing. How much worse to know that all the life that ever existed on this planet, and all it ever achieved, was to be obliterated?

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

We must try to contribute joy to the world.

Blockbusters run the mainstream industry. We may never again have a decade like the 1970s, when directors were able to find such freedom.

We can't help identifying with the protagonist. It's coded in our movie-going DNA.

There's something depressing about a young couple helplessly in love. Their state is so perfect, it must be doomed. They project such qualities on their lover that only disappointment can follow.

[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations when we're having them? At any given moment, what's happening in our minds is all and everything that happens.

A film is a terrible thing to waste.

Pixar is the first studio that is a movie star.

There are few lonelier sights than a good comedian being funny in a movie that doesn't know what funny is.

The purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize with other people... For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.

It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality.

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

A truly strong woman will choose a stong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along.

It amazes me that filmmakers will still film, and audiences will still watch, relationships so bankrupt of human feeling that the characters could be reading dialogue written by a computer.

Marlon Brando is the most influential movie actor of the century.

What makes people interesting is the spirit that shines through.

Film theory has nothing to do with film.