Roger Ebert Quotes

So much of what happens by chance forms what becomes of your life….I suppose I must be grateful, for I seem to have been headed this way all along.

When a movie character is really working, we become that character. That’s what the movies offer: escapism into lives other than our own.

In literature, it’s called plagiarism. In the movies, it’s homage.

You can't say it wasn't interesting.

When, in a free society, the press is criticized for negativity, that almost always means it has dared to question the policies of the party in power. 'Patriotism,' Samuel Johnson said, 'is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' He could have been speaking of those who use it to shield themselves from dissent.

[Orson Welles] was a man who made the greatest film ever made and was never forgiven for it.

Drama holds a mirror up to life, but needn't reproduce it.

The ability of an audience to enter into the narrative arc of a movie is being lost; do today’s audiences have the patience to wait for Harry Lime in The Third Man?

In our lives, we surf the wave of chance.

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 aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

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.

Short Life Syndrome. Night watchmen in horror movies have a life expectancy of twelve seconds.
SAM WAAs, Houston

Steak ’n Shake!

The story is recycled out of a 1983 French film named Les Comperes, as part of a trend in which Hollywood buys French comedies and experiments on them to see if they can be made in English with all of the humor taken out.

Perhaps it is the nature of man not to wish to know too much about his own nature.