Graham Moore Quotes & Sayings

Even a true story is a fiction, Paul knew. It is the comforting tool we use to organize the chaotic world around us into something comprehensible. It is the cognitive machine that separates the wheat of emotion from the chaff of sensation. — Graham Moore

If you know someone's secret, what power does that give you? How much power does that really give you? What can you do with secrets? — Graham Moore

Depression is something I've dealt with every day of my life. — Graham Moore

The bar was crowded with theorizing Sherlockians, who in the absence of any actual evidence had created grand machinations to explain the crime. Minor points of canonical disagreement became reasons for brutal murder. Some tried to piece together their theories in small groups, hoping that with enough brainpower and expertise they might arrive at a solution. Others jumped straight over the "investigation" phase and landed square at the end of the story they were creating, instantly accusing the man across the table of some vile treachery. And, moreover, actually employing phrases like "vile treachery" in doing so. Everyone was a suspect. But at the world's largest Sherlockian gathering, everyone was a detective as well. — Graham Moore

My mother, she worked in the mayor's office in Chicago when I was growing up and has been in democratic politics for a long time. — Graham Moore

His genius was not in inventing; rather, it was in inventing a system of invention. — Graham Moore

If the day hadn't yet convinced him of the merits of women's suffrage, it had certainly convinced him of the justness of the movement for Rational Dress. — Graham Moore

When I was 16 years old I tried to kill myself because I felt different and that I didn't belong. Now I'm here, and I want this moment to be for that kid who feels weird or different. Stay weird, stay different. — Graham Moore

Arthur looked deeply into the boy's clear blue eyes and scanned the contours of his handsome face. Arthur could hear something, faintly, in the distance. A rushing sound. A crash of water against rock. He wasn't sure if it was real or not, but he heard it all the same. Torrents of water rushing over a cliff. He tuned his ears to the noise and recognized the tone. He steadied his hand and listened to the sound, from the back of his mind, of the Reichenbach Falls. — Graham Moore

Light bulbs. Electricity. It seems likely that ours will be the last generation to ever gaze, wide-eyed, at something truly novel. That our kind will be the last to ever stare in disbelief at a man-made thing that could not possibly exist. We made wonders, boys. I only wonder how many of them are left to make. — Graham Moore

In my experience, depression was not something that has been cured so much as managed, like a lot of illnesses. — Graham Moore

Paranoid theorizing was too easy, too emotionally satisfying. — Graham Moore

One of the tricky things about sort of larger, comic-book action movies is that the scale is so big that they have to save the world at the end of every movie, and so at the end of each of the films, either Chicago or New York end up getting obliterated. — Graham Moore

I believe it is worthwhile trying to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know. — Graham Moore

There is an undeniable exhilaration in moment of even the smallest discovery — Graham Moore

Why, of course, if the reader were smart enough, he could figure the whole thing through after just the first few pages! But in his heart Arthur knew that his readers didn't really want to win. They wanted to test their wits against the author at full pitch, and they wanted to lose. To be dazzled. — Graham Moore

The immolation occurred late on a Friday morning. The lunchtime bustle was picking up as Paul descended from his office building onto the crowded street. He cut an imposing figure against the flow of pedestrians: six feet four inches, broad shouldered, clean-shaven, clothed in the matching black coat, vest, and long tie that was to be expected of New York's young professional men. His hair, perfectly parted on the left, had just begun to recede into a gentle widow's peak. He looked older than his twenty-six years. As — Graham Moore

The human mind thrills at few things so much as making connections. Discovering. Solving. — Graham Moore

I'm just this committed dilettante. I think what I've found is that I've tried to do a lot of different things in my life and discovered I'm not as good at them as I'd want to be. — Graham Moore

When I first starting writing, and no one was paying me, in order to feel like I had a real job, I would get out of bed, put on a jacket and tie every morning, and sit down at my desk. — Graham Moore

Chicago will forever be in my heart," she said. "It is the Paris of the Middle West. — Graham Moore

Harold had become, over the past week, a connoisseur of silences. He was an expert at differentiating the particulars; was this a Tranquil Silence, marked by slow sighs and peaceful smiles? Or was it a Tired Silence, marked by ornery chair shifting? Or a Tense Silence, full of tight breaths and cautious glances? — Graham Moore

I was not a successful TV comedy writer. — Graham Moore

Being bad at stuff is hard, and we all deal with it every day because we're all bad at stuff. — Graham Moore

[On writing more Sherlock Holmes stories.] 'I don't care whether you do or not,' said Bram. 'But you will, eventually. He's yours, till death do you part. Did you really think he was dead and gone when you wrote "The Final Problem"? I don't think you did. I think you always knew he'd be back. But whenever you take up your pen and continue, heed my advice. Don't bring him here. Don't bring Sherlock Holmes into the electric light. Leave him in the mysterious and romantic flicker of the gas lamp. He won't stand next to this, do you see? The glare would melt him away. He was more the man of our time than Oscar was. Or than we were. Leave him where he belongs, in the last days of our bygone century. Because in a hundred years, no one will care about me. Or you. Or Oscar. We stopped caring about Oscar years ago, and we were his bloody *friends.* No, what they'll remember are the stories. They'll remember Holmes. And Watson. And Dorian Gray. — Graham Moore

I'm not gay, but I don't think you have to be gay to have a gay hero. Growing up, Alan Turing was certainly mine. I'm also not the greatest mathematician of my generation. We have lots of biographical differences, but nonetheless, I always identified with him so much. — Graham Moore

Where the first America was brilliant, the second was ingenious. What — Graham Moore

We always knew that we didn't want to show Alan Turing in the act of suicide - it was our feeling that would tip over into melodrama too quickly and seem over-the-top. — Graham Moore

I think we all feel like weirdos for different reasons. — Graham Moore

The enduring appeal of mystery stories for all of us is that the world is a pretty confusing place. There's a lot of really unanswered things, and perhaps the scariest notion would be that there might not always be answers out there for us. — Graham Moore

Bankers all wanted to be princes. Professors all wanted to be Martin Luther. — Graham Moore

I felt like Alan Turing's story was such an important story to tell, and it was so wonderful to write the script and other people find it and say, 'I never heard this story.' It's such an amazing story that people don't believe it. — Graham Moore

I did an adaptation for a movie called 'The Devil in the White City' by Erik Larson for Warner Brothers. I love that book. — Graham Moore

Realism, I think, is fleeting. It's the romance that will live forever. — Graham Moore

Love grew commendably dependable - love was eggs, love was ham, love was the morning paper. — Graham Moore

One thing that I always loved about, say, 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', is that Indiana Jones gets the Ark of the Covenant about sixty percent of the way through the movie. And then the rest of it is get-out-alive. To me, that's really cool. Because he's the one you care about at the end of the day. — Graham Moore

Over the years, I would go to my agents, my manager, and I would say, 'Hey, there's this amazing true story about this gay English mathematician who committed suicide in the 1950s.' And they would be like, 'Please don't ever write that script. That is an unmakeable film.' — Graham Moore

He's just a man," said Paul. "No matter what The Sun says about him."
"He makes miracles. Lightning in a glass bottle. Voices in a copper wire. What kind of a man can do that?"
"A rich one.) — Graham Moore

Paul had always wanted to be a prodigy. But what no one ever told him was that prodigies don't feel like prodigies; they feel old. They feel like has-beens just at the moment that they're said to be blossoming. — Graham Moore

Gray fall light came through the nine square glass panes. On days like this, the strips of white wood that separated the glass seemed brighter to the eye than did the window light. — Graham Moore

General Electric.' It has a rather nice ring to it, doesn't it? — Graham Moore

Some writing one had to do in the dark. — Graham Moore

I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she doesn't fit in anywhere. You do. Stay weird. Stay different, and then when it's your turn and you are standing on this stage please pass the same message along. — Graham Moore

Turing was always a legend among computer/geeky kids. He was such an outsider in his own time, and because of that, he was able to see things differently. It was a story that had been well told in books, onstage and on TV, but never on film. — Graham Moore

What an imprecise science was medicine. It was more an art than was fiction. — Graham Moore

I had first heard about Alan Turing when I was a teenager. I've known about him since I was a kid, and I always wanted to write about him. — Graham Moore

Look, I get it. I'm a white, heterosexual man. It's really easy for me to say, 'Oh, wow, wasn't the nineteenth century terrific?' But try this. Imagine the scene: It's pouring rain against a thick window. Outside, on Baker Street, the light from the gas lamps is so weak that it barely reaches the pavement. A fog swirls in the air, and the gas gives it a pale yellow glow. Mystery brews in every darkened corner, in every darkened room. And a man steps out into that dim, foggy world, and he can tell you the story of your life by the cut of your shirtsleeves. He can shine a light into the dimness, with only his intellect and his tobacco smoke to help him. Now. Tell me that's not awfully romantic? — Graham Moore

Among tech-minded kids, I think Alan Turing was a tremendous inspiration. He was a guy that was so different than the people around him. He was an outsider in his own time, but because he was an outsider is precisely why he was able to accomplish things nobody thought was possible. — Graham Moore

A lot of biopics to me feel very much like someone is standing in front of the camera and is reading a Wikipedia page to you, like someone is reciting event. Did you know this happened? Did you know that happened? But Alan Turing's life deserved a sort of passionate film, and an exciting film. — Graham Moore

I started a novel right before 'The Imitation Game,' so it's funny now, four years later, to be coming almost back to finishing it. — Graham Moore

Westinghouse was responsible for tremendous feats of manufacturing - extremely well-built devices made by a factory of hundreds, each one supplying a part. A chain of construction. Edison, on the other hand, had built himself a factory that did not produce machines, but rather ideas. — Graham Moore

Everyone remembers the pop-quiz hotshot bit from 'Speed' because it's extremely funny, and it's really smart and really witty. And the notion that action movies can have dialogue that pops just as well as the explosions is something that I hope more people continue to remember. — Graham Moore

When you use the language of 'fact checking' to talk about a film, I think you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding how art works. You don't fact check Monet's 'Water Lilies.' That's not what water lilies look like; that's what the sensation of experiencing water lilies feel like. That's the goal of the piece. — Graham Moore

Alan Turing, to me, always felt like an outsider's outsider. — Graham Moore

Amazing, really, to think of what a man could achieve with the simple ability to put pen to paper and spin a decent yarn. — Graham Moore

Knowing the difference between right and wrong sometimes did not serve to clarify much of anything. Just because a man is able to draw his line in the sand, it doesn't mean he'll know what to do when his only course of action requires crossing it. — Graham Moore

I had been a lifelong Alan Turing obsessive. Among incredibly nerdy teenagers, without a lot of friends, Alan Turing was always this luminary figure we'd all look up to. — Graham Moore

Of all the conventions of mystery stories, the one that's impossible to break is the solution at the end. — Graham Moore

I like historical things; I like researching things. — Graham Moore

He would have achieved victory and rebellion at the same time. — Graham Moore

Refraction, he called it. The way light is broken up into component colors when it passes through a prism. I felt like a refraction of a person. So many different shades that layer to create the illusion of a solid thing. — Graham Moore

Poor people all think they deserve to be rich," he continued. "Rich people live every day with the uneasy knowledge that we do not. — Graham Moore

Arthur had never challenged a man to a duel, but in this moment he understood the magnificent reasonableness of the tradition. It was either that or slugging him outright this very second, which didn't seem nearly so gentlemanly. — Graham Moore

Inept lying was almost as good as honesty. — Graham Moore

I feel very Midwestern at my core. — Graham Moore

I think everyone practices their Oscars acceptance speech with a shampoo bottle, and I've done my fair share of them. It's really surreal to be able to do it in real life. — Graham Moore

On westminster Bridge, Arthur was struck by the brightness of the streetlamps running across like a formation of stars. They shone white against the black coats of the marching gentlefold and fuller than the moon against the fractal spires of Westminster. They were, Arthur quickly realized, the new electric lights, which the city government was installing, avenue by avenue, square by square, in place of the dirty gas lamps that had lit London's public spaces for a century. These new electric ones were brighter. They were cheaper. They required less maintenance. And they shone farther into the dime evening, exposing every crack in the pavement, every plump turtle sheel of stone underfoot. So long to the faint chiaroscuro of London, to the ladies and gentlemen in black-on-black relief. So long to the era of mist and carbonized Newcastle coal, to the stench of the Blackfriars foundry. Welcome to the cleasing glare of the twentieth century. — Graham Moore

I'm always much more interested in flawed heroes than in perfect ones. — Graham Moore

Sometimes I hate it so much," she said. "Always having to pretend." Paul gripped her fingers tighter. "This is America," he said. "We're all pretending. — Graham Moore

Art is a social object, books and films and records and television shows, they're social objects that bring people together in conversation. I love the notion that I could write something that two people could share. That's the goal. — Graham Moore

It is the people no one imagines anything from who do the things no one can imagine — Graham Moore

A vice is a thing which may be applauded in moderation but becomes horrific in overuse. — Graham Moore

The United States was of an anti-intellectual bent. And yet the two most technologically advanced laboratories in the world, as far as Paul could tell, were no longer in Paris's Louvre or London's Burlington House. They were now in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were operated by two self-made men with no formal training at all. — Graham Moore

Alan Turing is so important to me and to the world, and his story is so important to be told, so it was a big thing to take up, and I was a little petrified. Like, who am I to write the Alan Turing story? He's one of the great geniuses of the 20th century - who was horribly persecuted for being gay - and I'm a kid from Chicago. — Graham Moore

Thomas Edison was not, Paul thought, the first man to become rich by inventing something clever. Rather, he was the first man to build a factory for harnessing cleverness. — Graham Moore

When I was a teenager, I was a huge computer nerd. I went to computer programming camp. I went to space camp. — Graham Moore

Murder was so trivial in the stories Harold loved. Dead bodies were plot points, puzzles to be reasoned out. They weren't brothers. Plot points didn't leave behind grieving sisters who couldn't find their shoes. — Graham Moore

The representation of gay characters on screen is important for us all to think about because there are sadly too few representations of gay characters on screen in mainstream cinema. If Marvel starts making movies about gay superheroes, then we'll be in a really great place. We're not at that place. — Graham Moore

Arthur thought about this, and decided quite rationally that lying was by far the best approach to take. — Graham Moore

would first meet Thomas Edison, Paul watched a man burn — Graham Moore

One doesn't lie down with a lion and get to act surprised if one finds oneself devoured. — Graham Moore

Everyone has strange teenage years. It's not like I can claim some particularly unique set of high school horrors. I think I was just an awkward kid who never felt comfortable in his own skin. I think I was alone a lot by circumstance and then by choice. — Graham Moore

I was a sound engineer. That was my day job when I started writing. — Graham Moore

Women now seek to involve themselves in the life of their government because their government has involved itself in their lives! — Graham Moore

I have writer friends who go to the premiere of a film with their name listed as the writer, but they are shocked: 'That's not what I wrote!' — Graham Moore

The only way for something human to feel human is to convince others that it is. — Graham Moore

When I think of Sherlock Holmes, I think of a guy who can wander into the confusion of life and sort of pluck out answers at will. — Graham Moore

I liked Columbia, but it was like high school in that there was this big social world that I was not part of. I existed on the side, far away. That might be temperamental, my own fear of large groups, more than anything else. But I had a handful of professors who meant a lot to me. — Graham Moore

I believe in traditions; I believe in the idea of things being passed between generations and the slow transmission of cultural values through tradition. — Graham Moore

Depression is internal. The upswings and downswings have pretty much nothing to do with what's going on in the external world. It's not like something sad happens to you and then you feel sad. Good things happen, but you feel sad anyway. — Graham Moore

Watson is a cheap, efficient little sod of a literary device. Holmes doesn't need him to solve crimes any more than he needs a ten-stone ankle weight. The audience, Arthur. The audience needs Watson as an intermediary, so that Holmes's thoughts might be forever kept just out of reach. If you told stories from Holmes's perspective, everyone would know what the bleeding genius was thinking the whole time. They'd have the culprit fingered on page one. — Graham Moore

It takes a shock to the system, doesn't it, to make a man realize what good things he has. — Graham Moore

No worn, ink-drenched leather journal for the period from October 11 through December 23, 1900, could be found. — Graham Moore

Arthur and Bram stood on Bridge Street, just across from the
Jews' Burial Ground. Though it was quite dark, they could still
make out a few of the tallest headstones, chipped and ragged,
illuminated by the lights of the workhouse behind them. They
heard the groans of drunks from somewhere beyond, and from the
large road they heard the faint pitter-patter of prostitutes' feet
along the dirt. Arthur had not planned this return to the East End,
to be sure. But now that he was here, and had been venturing here
for the past two days, he realized that of course there was nowhere
else for this matter to properly end. — Graham Moore

I love the filmmaking process. It can be loud sometimes, and people love having conference calls, so working on a book is the polar opposite. It's very relaxing. — Graham Moore

Arthur narrowly avoided tripping over his own skirt as he hurried out of the ladies' powder room in full pursuit. — Graham Moore

Britain in 1939 and 1940 really thought they were going to lose the war. It looked like they were going to lose. There was bombing every day, and people were literally starving. — Graham Moore

Space camp was actually, like, the best summer of my life. It was amazing. But I thought I wanted to be a computer programmer, and among computer science folks, Turing is this object of cult-like fascination. — Graham Moore

The moment you stop bargaining is the last in which you're ever given a thing. — Graham Moore

If you're going to make a film, and you're going to have dialogue, and you want to take the characters seriously, let's understand what they're saying. If there is going to be technical dialogue, let's render it in a way that the audience can understand it and expect that it's not going to be so far over their heads. — Graham Moore