"But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil."

— I Peter 3:14-17

"I do not hold that because the author did a bad job of writing the player need trump it with the same kind of acting. When I go into a picture I have only one character to look after. If the author didn’t do him justice, I try to add whatever the creator of the part overlooked."

— William Powell (via Motion Picture Magic)

A typical conversation

  • Jonathan: Monday again? Ugh.
  • Me: Yeah, we should do something about Mondays. Like get an injunction. Or a cease and desist. A restraining order at least.
  • Jonathan: Yeah, an injunction might be best. If we could get it to break copyright law, we could hit it with a cease and desist.
  • Me: But if we "get it" to break copyright law, that might be entrapment. That wouldn't work out well for us.
  • Jonathan: Oh, good point. Hmm. Can we just blast it with rock salt and bury it alive?
  • Me: I don't know - did Monday train with Pai Mei?
  • Jonathan: I don't think so.
  • Me: Well, then, yeah. That's a viable option, then.

"No, no. He wasn’t big on bullshit."

— Farley Granger, on being asked if Alfred Hitchcock discussed the psychological motivations of the character with Granger before shooting.

"I’d like viewers to come away from my films unsure whether they’ve understood them."

— Jean-Pierre Melville

"

[The 1970s were] the last time Hollywood produced a body of risky, high-quality work — work that was character-, rather than plot-driven, that defied traditional narrative conventions, that challenged the tyranny of technical correctness, that broke the taboos of language and behavior, that dared to end unhappily. […] In a culture inured even to the shock of the new, in which today’s news is tomorrow’s history to be forgotten entirely or recycled in some unimaginably debased form, ’70s movies retain their power to unsettle; time has not dulled their edge, and they are as provocative now as they were the day they were released. […] The thirteen years between Bonnie & Clyde in 1967 and Heaven’s Gate in 1980 marked the last time it was really exciting to make movies in Hollywood, the last time people could be consistently proud of the pictures they made, the last time the community as a whole encouraged good work, the last time there was an audience that could sustain it.

And it wasn’t only the landmark movies that made the late ’60s and ’70s unique. This was a time when film culture permeated American life in a way that it never had before and never has since. In the words of Susan Sontag, ‘It was at this specific moment in the 100-year history of cinema that going to the movies, thinking about movies, talking about movies became a passion among university students and other young people. You fell in love not just with actors but with cinema itself.’ Film was no less than a secular religion.

"

— Peter Biskind - Easy Riders: Raging Bulls: How the Sex ‘n’ Drugs ‘n’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, Introduction.

"It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others."

— Virginia Woolf

"Being lonely is a habit, like smoking or taking drugs. And I’ve quit them both but man was it rough."

— Jenny Lewis, “Acid Tongue”

"I really have done unspeakable things in pursuit of the last line of the third verse of a song that will be track eight on a record that 30,000 people are going to buy."

— Emily Haines to Filter (via fuckyeahemilyhaines)

"A room full of vacuum and a room full of air look the same. You have not been reborn, you’ve just painted your face, painted the walls."

— Los Campesinos!, “Ways to Make It Through the Wall” (from We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed)