Roger Ebert Quotes

I have been here before, I am here now, I will be here again.

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

I missed the enormously popular movie that introduced these characters, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and felt myself blessed at the time. But now I'm not so sure. Their Bogus Journey is a riot of visual invention and weird humor that works on its chosen sub-moronic level, and on several others as well, including some fairly sophisticated ones. It's the kind of movie where you start out snickering in spite of yourself, and end up actually admiring the originality that went into creating this hallucinatory slapstick.

One hopeful sign that the filmmakers can learn and grow is that the sequel does not contain a single pie, if you know what I mean.

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

Formula comedies are a dime a dozen. Those based on an original idea are more rare, and Groundhog Day, apart from everything else, is a demonstration of the way time can sometimes give us a break. Just because we're born as SOBs doesn't mean we have to live that way.

[W]hat Husbands and Wives argues is that many "rational" relationships are actually not as durable as they seem, because somewhere inside every person is a child crying me! me! me! We say we want the other person to be happy. What we mean is, we want them to be happy with us, just as we are, on our terms... Beneath the urgency of all the older characters - both men, both women, and even the older dating partners they experiment with - is the realization that life is short, that time is running out, that life sells you a romantic illusion and neglects to tell you that you can't have it, because when you take any illusion and make it flesh, its hair begins to fall out, and it has B.O., and it asks you what your sign is. True love involves loving another's imperfections, which are the parts that tend to endure.

It's the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy from the first shot.

and the sexes eyeing each other uneasily, for nothing is easier for a teenager to imagine than rejection.

Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.

I must slow down now, which is why I'm taking what I like to call "a leave of presence." What in the world is a leave of presence? It means I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers handpicked and greatly admired by me. What's more, I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review. … So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I'll see you at the movies.

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

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.

That's how I gained a lifelong fondness for repeating certain phrases beyond the point of all reason.

Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. That’s for them to believe. I don’t believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn’t make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social. I’ve spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me and the reassurance of tradition.