Roger Ebert Quotes

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 reflected on the upturned faces of the members of the audience.

The very fact of snow is such an amazement.

Start. Don’t look back. If at the end it doesn’t meet your hopes, start again. Now you know more about your hopes.

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?

Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.

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

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

We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.

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

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 Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!

When you're young you don't realize that at every age you are always in the present, and in that sense no older;

We are poor mortals, but it dreams to us that we can fly.

Never marry someone who doesn’t love the movies you love. Sooner or later, that person will not love you.

It is said that the human brain divides its functions. The right brain is devoted to sensory impressions, emotions, colors, music. The left brain deals with abstract thought, logic, philosophy, analysis.

My definition of a great movie: While you’re watching it, it engages your right brain. When it’s over, it engages your left brain.

"In Dallas for the premier of '9 to 5', I had an uncanny experience, and on the plane home to Chicago I confessed it to Siskel: I had been granted a private half hour with Dolly Parton, and as we spoke I was filled with a strange ethereal grace. This was not spiritual, nor was it sexual. It was healing and comforting. Gene listened and said, "Roger, I felt the exact same thing during my interview with her." We looked at each other. What did this mean? Neither one of us ever felt that feeling again. From time to time we would refer to it in wonder."