Dear Bill (O’Reilly)…I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago...

A lot of people didn’t [have sex] in high school in the 1950s, … My favorite actors include Robert Mitchum and Clint Eastwood . They don’t look anything like me.

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.

To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can...

The early years were pretty rocky, there were a lot of fights, a lot of disagreements, some edginess, … Gradually, I think, we came to really enjoy doing this show and really respect the other...

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....

Most of us do not consciously look at movies.

But the fact is, most people are not going to be rich someday.

How quickly we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story “Nightfall,” about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight...

Gene [Siskel] often mentioned something François Truffaut once told him: the most beautiful sight in a movie theater is to walk down to the front, turn around, and look at the light from the screen...

I don’t think he’s an a-, … But if he’s going to persist in making bad movies, he’s going to have to grow accustomed to reading bad reviews.

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

So much of what happens by chance forms what becomes your life.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn’t have to be white, and the other one doesn’t have...

I am utterly bored by celebrity interviews. Most celebrities are devoid of interest.

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...

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

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

To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion,

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another,...

It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.

The secret of the movie is that it doesn’t strain to draw parallels with current world events – because it doesn’t have to.

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

At three hours it is even operatic in length, as its themes unfold, its characters strive against the dying of the light, and the great wheel of chance rolls on toward them.

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.

You can’t say it wasn’t interesting.

Entertainment is about the way things should be. Art is about the way they are.

Million Dollar Baby

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.

No matter what they’re charging to get in, it’s worth more to get out.

The reason (Burton) wanted to make ‘Ed Wood’ is that Ed Wood had so much fun making movies. And that’s where Ed Wood and Tim Burton connect. Tim Burton makes films that are a lot...

Well, you know what, I’m 60 years old, and I’ve been interested in politics since I was on my daddy’s knee. During the 1948 election, we were praying for Truman. I know a lot about...

Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.

Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film.

On Hayao MiyazakiI told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or...

The very fact of snow is such an amazement.

There was a bedrock of respect that developed over the years,

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

The sad thing is that when movies like this fail, executives think that proves there’s no audience for unusual, original pictures – because they think they’ve made one.

What am I to think when six weekends of this year already have been won by slasher movies that were not screened for critics and got bad ratings on the tomato meter when they were...

Well, you know, a lot of modern directors and their movies are influenced by the flat lighting and textbook cutting style of television.

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

I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class.

One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going?

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its ‘self-help’ section: ‘For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

Gene was a lifelong friend and our professional competition only strengthened that bond, … He showed great bravery in the months after his surgery, continuing to work as long as he could.

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.

It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.

The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can’t change your mind, because God sure isn’t going to change His.