Best Picture Quotes & Sayings

April 10: Marilyn appears on time for six hours of costume tests for Something's Got to Give. She is irritated that Cukor is not there to meet her. She looks radiant, and Peter Levathes tells the press, "This will be the best Monroe picture ever. Marilyn is at the peak of her beauty and ability." But that evening, producer Henry Weinstein finds her sprawled across a bed and unconscious after an overdose of barbiturates. He calls Ralph Greenson, who revives her. It is announced to the press that Marilyn will be part of the entertainment at the president's Madison Square Garden birthday party. Marilyn agrees to pay $1,440.33 for the cost of producing a dress decorated with hand-stitched rhinestones, beading, and mirrors. — Carl Rollyson

This is amazing," Jane said. "I show your sister a picture and she makes me food." "Should I be jealous? Ya didn't get this excited by my powers," Iain said. "You didn't tell me you could materialize cupcakes off a magazine picture," Jane said. "That's because he can't," Malina informed. "Oh, and I didn't tell you the best part. You get all the pleasure of eating but none of the weight. On the down side, none of the nutrition if you're locked somewhere without actual food. — Michelle M. Pillow

Sexuality, desirability has nothing to do with body type. It has to do with how you feel from within. I was at my fattest best in 'The Dirty Picture,' and I was called the most desirable. So there you go. I am quite well-endowed, so I have no complaints. — Vidya Balan

Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A short term view will lead to a partial and perhaps twisted view of the whole picture. A crucial element may be missing. We may not be running the entire race. A friend of mine described a colleague as great at running the "ninety-five yard dash." That is a distinction I can do without. Lacking the last five yards makes the first ninety-five pointless. In fact, serious runners thing of it as a 110 yard dash so that no one will best them in the last few yards. You've got to think beyond the whole. — Max De Pree

Whether the task is writing, design, or hanging a picture straight, it is obvious that we do our best work when healthy, rested, refreshed, alert, and eager to do the job for its own sake. — Jeffrey Zeldman

Chess is a very positive way to exercise your mind. It makes you look at the whole picture ... what are your options and what is the best thing to do? In football, you are mostly reacting from a defensive point of view ... but you always want to be counterattacking ... a similarity with chess strategy. Chess and offensive football are quite similar; you sacrifice something now to get something back later. — Barney Chavous

Force me to choose my best book, and I always come back to 'Gorilla.' It was the first time I felt I understood what picture books could do. — Anthony Browne

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is.
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that's out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices.
When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.
Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty! — Vera Nazarian

There's this long tradition of ... even 'Where The Wild Things Are,' which many people consider the best kids' picture book of all time. It was considered revolutionary, and some libraries wouldn't carry it. But it's a classic because it taps into empowerment for kids, kids facing dangers and winning. — Henry Selick

It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world — Oscar Wilde

One of the best bits of advice I can give is, early on, when you're building a new business, try to find somebody to run it on a day-to-day basis to free yourself up to look at the bigger picture. — Richard Branson

I need to live up to my potential, wherever that may be, in all aspects of my life. My head gets in the way, and I need to look at the big picture - that this is the best, and I am living my dream. — Chris Cole

My nominee for Best Picture of the year - maybe the best picture ever, because it's essentially made up of and is an ecstatic love letter to all other movies - is Christian Marclay's endlessly enticing must-see masterpiece 'The Clock.' — Jerry Saltz

At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest. — Ralph Ellison

A large picture can give us images of things, but a relatively small one can best re-create the instantaneous unity of nature as a view - the unity of which the eyes take in at a single glance. — Clement Greenberg

It wasn't the best view of the landscape around their buried bunker, but it wasn't the worst, either. In the distance, low rolling hills stood, a pretty shade of brown, like coffee mash with just the right amount of pig's milk in it. The sky above the hills was the same dull gray of his childhood and his father's childhood and his grandfather's childhood. The only moving feature on the landscape was the clouds. They hung full and dark over the hills. They roamed free like the herded beasts from the picture books. — Hugh Howey

Rose's work of art took her all day, including two playtimes, story time, and most of lunch.
At the end of school it was stolen from her by the wicked teacher who had pretended to be so interested.
"Beautiful- what-is-it?" she asked as she pinned it high on the wall, where Rose could not reach.
"They take your pictures," said Indigo, ... when he finally made out what all the roaring and stamping was about. "They do take them ... Why do you want that picture so much?" he asked Rose.
"It was my best ever," said Rose furiously. "I hate school. I hate everyone in it. I will kill them all when I'm big enough."
"You can't just go round killing people," Indigo told her ... — Hilary McKay

You can't reinvent the wheel. You've got to just take the best from all the other shows and try to make it work, because there's the "live show Gods" that dictate if there are going to be any surprises, if there's a very commercial film that's a Best Picture. There are a lot of things that are out of my control, but I do my best. — Brett Ratner

I make work that is many things at once: poems that are prose, that are pictures, that are poem and picture. Actions that are images using poems that are umbrellas. My best work is both/and, in-between, occupying several dimensions simultaneously.
(from my Poetics Statement in Troubling the Line) — Jay Besemer

Our best pictures happen by grace. — Joyce Tenneson

The audio system piped Civil War-era piano into the examining room, lending the lab a strangely dichotomous feel of the modern twenty-first century medical facility and the late nineteenth century, when you poured whiskey over a bullet wound and hoped for the best. He could picture himself in a saloon after the end of the Civil War at the same time as he stood in the white and stainless steel lab. — Nina Post

What is the world? What is it for?
It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched.
Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe. — N.D. Wilson

I always think, 'What does this picture mean? What's the best place to put my camera? Do I have anything extra in the picture, things in the background that will distract? Am I in the basic position that will give the essential things for this picture but not too much?' — Mary Ellen Mark

The Los Angeles Citizen-News (5/29/58) concurred, but felt the picture had more serious problems in the story department: Unfortunately, the story, as adapted for the screen comes off less praiseworthy, for most of the time the picture is not a little confusing. The story line is not easy to follow. ... Vertigo is technically a topnotch film. Storywise, little can be said. Hitchcock does as well as he can, considering the script, in a directorial capacity. Vertigo is not his best picture. — Dan Auiler

I'm very surprised at Carol didn't get a best picture. Todd Haynes is an Academy darling, his period pieces are nothing short of brilliant, and they hold up. And I definitely feel like Carol speaks to, even though it's set in the past, it speaks to themes we're dealing with in life right now. It's really really shocking that it didn't get it. — Bun B.

What would you love to achieve and accomplish? What would you feel great about doing in your life? What meaningful goals would you wish to reach? Imagine achieving and accomplishing everything that you would wish [dream] for. Picture yourself reaching your highest aspirations and your most meaningful goals. Visualize yourself speaking and acting the way you would wish with the highest and best character traits. — Zelig Pliskin

'Beatrice Cenci' was an amazing film. If it were released today it'd win Best Picture. It's so well done, it's so contemporary, and the filmmaking is so smart. — Eli Roth

You might be a redneck if you have refused to watch the Academy Awards since Smokey and the Bandit was snubbed for best picture. — Jeff Foxworthy

Many readers simply can't stomach fantasy. They immediately picture elves with broadswords or mighty-thewed barbarians with battle axes, seeking the bejeweled Coronet of Obeisance ... (But) the best fantasies pull aside the velvet curtain of mere appearance ... In most instances, fantasy ultimately returns us to our own now re-enchanted world, reminding us that it is neither prosaic nor meaningless, and that how we live and what we do truly matters. — Michael Dirda

You know the saying that nothing can last forever? It's partly true. Feelings can stop, people can leave us, but regardless, a piece of them is always with us, in some way. Maybe it's in a song, or a forgotten note, a picture. Even when you no longer love someone or can't be with them, you still remember them, you still remember good parts of them, and you smile. Why worry about it lasting or not? Even if it doesn't, you'll still have a part of him. And he'll still have a part of you. And isn't that what's really important? Holding the best pieces of someone in our hearts so that the love never really fades, so that we don't forget that we once knew them, and they were special to us. — Lindy Zart

Daniel looked down the barrel of the shotgun al set to blow his
brains out and grinned. These days, even a gun-toting, trigger-happy
female was a delight to behold, and she was perfect.
Sunlight streamed in through the kitchen window. She all but shone
with it, like an angel or a princess or something. Something a little
overdue for a bath and a lot on edge, but something very good just
the same. The feeling of sweet relief rushing through him nearly
buckled his knees.
Tall and curvy, around thirty at a guess, and uninfected, she was by
far the best thing he had ever seen in jeans and a t-shirt. Not even the
dried blood splattered on the wal behind her could diminish the
picture she made.
Sadly, his girl did not appear to share his joy — Kylie Scott

'The Graduate' should have won best picture over 'In the Heat of the Night.' — Andy Kindler

Learn to choose and how it's done ... Learning what to choose and how to choose it is the best way of getting your bigger picture out of your passport size potentials! — Israelmore Ayivor

I'm a rewriter. That's the part I like best ... once I have a pile of paper to work with, it's like having the pieces of a puzzle. I just have to put the pieces together to make a picture. — Judy Blume

This is the way in which he (poet) did his work. He used to go out with a pencil and a tablet and note what struck him...and make a picture out of it...But Nature does not allow an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil behind, and gone forth in a meditative spirit; and, on a later day, he should have embodied in verse not all that he had noted but what he best remembered of the scene; and he would have then presented us with its soul, and not with the mere visual aspect of it. — William Wordsworth

The best thing I ever did in life was nothing, and I got a medal for it. I was a hero once. And if you look at my picture, that's all I'll ever be. Minutes — Hugh Howey

My life has been fortunate in one glad way: I have lived mostly in the country and worked in the woods. For every bad man and woman I have ever known, I have met, lived with, and am intimately acquainted with an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is UPON THE LIVES OF THESE THAT I BASE WHAT I WRITE. To contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. It does. It produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men and good women can do at level best. — Gene Stratton-Porter

My job as an actor is to serve the script. If I'm looking at it as to see what the best character is, then it's not really looking at the big picture. — Frank Grillo

It's best to keep America just like that, always in the background, a sort of picture post card which you look at in a weak moment. Like that, you imagine it's always there waiting for you, unchanged, unspoiled, a big patriotic open space with cows and sheep and tenderhearted men ready to bugger everything in sight, man, woman or beast. It doesn't exist, America. It's a name you give to an abstract idea ... — Henry Miller

You know, when you choose to make your living as an actor, it's all fine and good to look at it as some kind of artistic endeavor. At its best, it is that. But the fact is, most of the actors out there don't earn $3 million a picture and can't afford to take two years off between films and look for the right thing. Most of us are tradesmen. — James Spader

Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book. — Anthony Browne

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: "I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can't. It's the best film I've seen since Citizen Kane". — Barbra Streisand

When I act, I feel like I am a color in someone else's painting - I can be the best blue that there is, but I'm still only part of their entire picture - but, with music, when I am performing with Reserved For Rondee, I am the painter, you know? — Billy Magnussen

They say you should never hide anything from your doctors and lawyers. Hiding from a doctor could lead your way to heaven (or hell). Hiding from a lawyer could land you behind bars. Doctors give you the right direction to your present and lawyers give a picture to your future. They need to know more than what you could share with your best of friends. — Shikha Kaul

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you're going to die. There is always the possibility of escape. There is always somewhere else and far away, a fact I had never really appreciated until I read Gitta Sereny's profoundly unsettling Cries Unheard about child-killer Mary Bell.
At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We begin to picture a time when there will no longer be somewhere else and far away. We have jobs, children, partners, debts, responsibilities. And if many of these things enrich our lives immeasurably, those shrinking limits are something we all have to come to terms with.
This, I think, is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks. — Mark Haddon

In the book i'm reading (The Principal) the main chareter best friend has to go to a differnt school. I can picture them waiting at the bus stop together crying. — Jerry Spinelli

Despite what we knitters know to be true, the non-knitting world somehow persists in thinking that a "knitter" looks a certain way. Most likely, this picture is one of an elderly woman, grandmotherly and polite, sitting in her rocking chair surrounded by homemade cookies and accompanied by a certain number of cats.
In reality, a knitter today is just as likely to be young, hip, male, and sitting at a "Stitch and Bitch" in a local bar. Several of today's best knitting designers are men, and a knitter is as likely to have body piercings as homemade cookies.
Despite our diversity, the tendency to be accompanied by a cat is an oddity among knitters that cannot be explained. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Bingo!! Once again, privatization
*total* privatization
is the best solution. Get government, and government-sanctioned business collectives, out of the health 'care' picture entirely and, just maybe, I can go back to typing the word 'care' (in relation to 'health') without the quotes. — Edward Britton

I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism. — Eve Arnold

The mere exposure to masterworks does not suffice. Too many persons visit museums and collect picture books without ever gaining access to art. The inborn capacity to understand through the eyes has been put to sleep and must be reawakened. This is best accomplished by handling pencils, brushes, chisels and perhaps cameras. — Rudolf Arnheim

When you realize my best selling books are 'Owl Moon,' the 'How Do Dinosaur' books, and 'Devil's Arithmetic,' how can the public make sense of that! I have fans who think I only write picture books or only write SF and fantasy. I have fanatics of my poetry and are stunned to find out I write prose, too! — Jane Yolen

The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture. — Suzanne Fields

I sincerely believe that the best criticism is the criticism that is entertaining and poetic; not a cold analytical type of criticism, which, claiming to explain everything, is devoid of hatred and love, and deliberately rids itself of any trace of feeling, but, since a fine painting is nature reflected by an artist, the best critical study, I repeat, will be the one that is that painting reflected by an intelligent and sensitive mind. Thus the best accounts of a picture may well be a sonnet or an elegy ... But that type of criticism is destined for books of poetry and for readers of poetry. As to criticism proper, I hope philosophers will understand what I am about to say: to be in focus, in other words to justify itself, criticism must be partial, passionate, political, that is to say it must adopt an exclusive point of view, provided always the one adopted opens up the widest horizons. — Charles Baudelaire

Mr. Worthington,
I understand that you do not control Chuck and Jasper.
But you see, I am in a similar situation. I do not control the little devil sitting on my left shoulder. The devil is saying, "PRINT THE PICTURE PRINT THE PICTURE TAPE IT UP ALL OVER SCHOOL DO IT DO IT DO IT." And then on my right shoulder, there is a little tiny white angel. And the angel is saying, "Man, I sure as shit hope all those freshmen get their money bright and early on Monday morning." So do I, little angel. So do I.
Best Wishes,
Your friendly Neighboorhood Nemesis. — John Green

So Nemerov showed us this picture, which is of Apollo flaying Marcius. You don't think of Apollo as being the sort of person who would skin someone alive. But the story behind it was that there was this guy who was a really great musician, and all the women loved him, and people started saying he was the best musician in the world, so Apollo got jealous and he challenged this guy to a musical dual. They would each play a song and the muses would judge who was the better musician. — Larkin Grimm

I like Saturdays. They are my best thinking days. It is my day to try to find that one special thought that turns into an idea that I remember forever and becomes a part of who I am, like a freckle or a finger or an ear. Even before I open my eyes I take a deep breath and try to picture something, anything, as if my brain were a keyhole where I can spy on my future. So each Saturday morning I try to find a little piece of a thought, and then I keep turning it over in my mind until it turns into a complete idea and at the end of the day when I'm lying in bed I put the whole thought into a little room in my head so I can remember it. — Jack Gantos

When audiences rejected Ace in the Hole, Wilder said: "F*** them all. It's the best picture I ever made. — Anupama Chopra

Most people report dreaming principally in visual images. Freud, however, assumes that dreams start from a dream-thought that is best expressed in words and translate it into a picture-language which is intellectually inferior because it cannot convey logical connections; the analyst restores to the dream its verbal character. — Sigmund Freud

You don't have to pose your camera. The pictures are there, and you just take them. The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda. (On the Spanish Civil War, 1937) — Robert Capa

To get the best picture of a captured prisoner, you have to get him just as he is captured. The expression he wears then is lost forever ... The human mechanism is remarkably recuperative. A half hour later, the expressions are gone, the faces have changed. The mother with the dead baby in her arms does not look griefstruck anymore, no matter what she feels. — Horst Faas

Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate "my careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful; that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil, and your picture ['The White Horse'] is one of the strongest instance I can recollect of it. — John Constable

People are complicated puzzles, always trying to piece together a complete picture, but sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we're left unfinished. Sometimes that's for the best. Some pieces can't be forced into a puzzle, or at least they shouldn't be, because they won't make sense. — Adam Silvera

You know I meant it. I am human. And male. And not remotely blind. Do you want me to say it again? You are distractingly, even if-that-is-not-a-real-word pretty. You are so pretty that I bullied Clay Whitaker into drawing me a picture of you so I could look at you when you aren't around. You are so pretty that one of these days I'm going to lose a finger in my garage because I can't concentrate with you so close to me. You are so pretty that I wish you weren't so I wouldn't want to hit every guy at school who looks at you, especially my best friend. — Katja Millay

Johnson's later life, from 1763, is among the best documented of all literary lives. James Boswell gave himself the enormous task, after Johnson's death in 1784, of producing what is now held to be a model of biography; rich in detail and anecdote, a complete picture of the man and his times, traced over a period of more than twenty years. Boswell's Life of Johnson, published in 1791, carries on Johnson's own contribution to the growing art of biography, and consolidates Johnson's position as a major literary figure, who, although a poet and a novelist, is remembered more for his academic and critical achievement than for his creative writings. — Ronald Carter

First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and third
before long the best lines cancel out
and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the picture have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children and business associates are accepted as true. — F Scott Fitzgerald

But there is more to a fine photograph than information. We are also seeking to present an image that arouses the curiosity of the viewer or that, best of all, provokes the viewer to think-to ask a question or simply to gaze in thoughtful wonder. We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make. It is the kind of picture that makes you want to pick up your own camera again and go to work. — Sam Abell

I am thrilled with my fan base. For some reason some of them are quite young, so they are quite frightened. I remember when I did 'Click' and I'd see Adam Sandler's fan base. He's the guy that people feel that he's their best friend, so he's walking down the street and people sort of high five him and want to tell him a joke or invite him to come home and have a sandwich with them. Mine are not like that. Mine tend to go: 'Argh,' and look horrified. They shake and take a picture from a really long way away. I do feel I've got quite good, respectful ones though. — Colin Farrell

We're trying, despite having done research and having obviously preconceived ideas, we try our best to be as open-hearted as possible, and try to create context. So that's always going to be the challenge, making a program like 'Gaycation', and we are always thinking about it, reflecting on it, and doing our best to show the whole picture as much as possible in a 45-minute span. Hopefully that comes across. — Ellen Page

When I do period work, I really like to read about the period as much as I like to look at pictures because sometimes the written word is much better at conveying what their lives were really like and how much they had and where their clothes came from. Because, a lot of time, people dressed in their Sunday best to pose for a picture. — Colleen Atwood

To lead is a privilege, not an entitlement. It doesn't make you better than anyone; it helps you bring out the best in everyone. Accolades don't inspire a leader's vision; they've set their sights on the success of others. Leaders bypass shortsightedness and focus on the big picture. Leaders who always stand righteously never stand alone. — Carlos Wallace

This was not Newt's fault; in his younger days he would go every couple of months to the barber's shop on the corner, clutching a photograph he's carefully torn from a magazine which showed someone with an impressively cool haircut grinning at the camera and he would show the picture to the barber, and ask to be made to look like that, please. And the barber, who knew his job, would take one look and then give Newt the basic, all-purpose, short-back-and-sides. After a year of this, Newt realized that he obviously didn't have the face for haircuts. The best Newton Pulsifer could hope for after a haircut was shorter hair. — Neil Gaiman

Pictures could not be accessories to the story
evidence
they had to contain the story within the frame; the best picture contained a whole war within one frame. — Tatjana Soli

Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be reached by combing all this evidence ... It is only by combing the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine 'truth' here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability. Further, we have to be prepared always for the possibility that each new discovery, no matter what science furnishes it, may modify the conclusions we draw. — Alfred Wegener

Last night meant as much to me as it did to her and she painted it, capturing it in a way unique to Echo. [ ... ] Up close all those colors would look like chaos, but when viewed as a whole it creates this beautiful picture. In the end, that's the best way to describe me and Echo, our relationship. Our love. — Katie McGarry

What matters is the character of ... stereotypes, and the gullibility with which we employ them. And these in the end depend upon ... our philosophy of life. If in that philosophy we assume that the world is codified according to a code which we possess, we are likely to make our reports of what is going on describe a world run by our code. But if our philosophy tells us that each man is only a small part of the world, that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects in a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly. We tend, also, to realize more and more clearly when our ideas started, where they started, how they came to us, why we accepted them. All useful history is antiseptic in this fashion. It enables us to know what fairy tale, what school book, what tradition, what novel, play, picture, phrase, planted one preconception in this mind, another in that mind. — Walter Lippmann

My best days do seem like a distillation of all that was best about school. Write a story! Paint a picture! Write a poem! Make a print! — Mark Haddon

The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda. — Robert Capa

What we want to do in this moment is rarely what's best for us. We need to take a longer view of life and to realize that to become someone worth becoming, I probably need to be doing things I don't want to be doing. — Vince Antonucci

There is a black-and-white picture in my hallway, of me, Nancy, and Lizzie in the bath, when Nancy was eight months old and Lizzie two-and-a-half. I am gently biting Lizzie. Nancy, in turn, is gumming my face. All eyes are on the person taking the picture - Pete, who was, as the slight camera-wobble shows, laughing. There we are-a tangle of half-shared DNA, all interlocking with each other; all being watched over by the one who loves us best. If I had to explain to someone what happiness is, I would show them this picture. — Caitlin Moran

I think they're bogus, honestly. How utter garbage like Crash and Million Dollar Baby can win best picture, where true works of art such as Garden State go untouched is beyond me. It just proves how close-minded America really is, and I refuse to take part in it. — Zach Braff

What is this world? What is it for? It is art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the Infinite. — N.D. Wilson

I've never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it's not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I've always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn't a part of the picture. — John Hawkes

The personality and style of a photographer usually limits the type of subject with which he deals best. For example Cartier-Bresson is very interested in people and in travel; these things plus his precise feeling for geometrical relationships determine the type of pictures he takes best. What is of value is that a particular photographer sees the subject differently. A good picture must be a completely individual expression which intrigues the viewer and forces him to think. — Alexey Brodovitch

But often it is a seemingly irresolvable relationship that teaches us the most, once we're willing to be vulnerable and honest, once we're willing to connect with what Chogyam Trungpa called "the genuine heart of sadness." As warriors in training we do our best to hold the person in our heart without any hypocrisy. One thing we can do with a difficult relationship is to place a picture of the person somewhere we will see it often and think, "I wish for your deepest well-being". Or we can write down the person's name, along with the aspiration that they may be safe, may be happy, may live in peace.
Regardless of what specific action we take, our aspiration is to benefit the other person and wish them well. — Pema Chodron

But in my mind, I don't think there's any question Sidney Crosby is the best all-around player in the game. His hockey sense is so strong and so solid, combined with his God-gifted talent of being able to see the ice, see the entire picture in front of him. And, most importantly, I don't care how good you are, if you don't have a work ethic, it doesn't matter. There's no question that each and every game, he's one of the hardest-working guys on the ice. In my mind, he's the best player in the game today. — Wayne Gretzky

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them. — Sarah Waters

The human body is the best picture of the human soul. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I'd like to build a house there someday. One with a big plate-glass window in the front so I can sip my tea and watch the flowers grow. Eden leaned into his side as she stepped around a hole dug by a ground squirrel or some other burrowing creature, and Levi couldn't help but picture himself behind that same window, moving up behind Eden to touch his lips to the sensitive skin along her neck. She'd smile and ask about his day. He'd wrap his arms around her and say that the best part of it was coming home. Then perhaps a little girl with reddish curls and moss-green eyes would run into the room, call him Daddy, and latch on to his leg. He'd swing her high into the air and laugh at her delighted squeals. — Karen Witemeyer

I want a nice picture book with 12 pictures - I do my best with that format. — Dick Bruna

Which is my best picture? The one I will do tomorrow. — Imogen Cunningham

The best picture is around the corner. Like prosperity. — Ansel Adams

The best picture I got was Bianca Jagger whispering in Mick's ear. I caught them telling a secret, which is sort of rude. — Robert Mapplethorpe

She clears her throat and does her best to start, laying out the technical specs of last year's party: who was there; what they were doing; why they came with this or that person. I guess she wants me to have a full and realistic picture. Some people need that, I suppose. Personally, I'm the type who likes to fill in the blanks and make it my own. It's probably better that way than it really was. — Kendare Blake

The night before I married you your father made me promise to always take care of you." I laughed a little, easily able to picture my tall, burly father cornering the young knight I had fallen in love with. "To the best of my ability I have kept that promise." I laid my hand on his chest to comfort the tension that rippled through his muscles.
"You have, Lance," I assured him. He took my hand in his and turned very serious.
"No, I haven't. I haven't provided you with everything you need. — Derendrea

I've wanted to follow my dad into acting for as long as I can remember. 'I've had a very serious round of dramatic training, and I like action films that take their characters seriously, so I figure I'm making it the best of both worlds if I try to bring some serious acting to a shoot-'em-up picture. — Brandon Lee

'Birdman' is basically 'All About Eve' - the 1950 comedy about rehearsal rivalries in a Broadway show, and another Best Picture laureate - reimagined as a Batman suicide mission. The movie couldn't be actor-ier. — Richard Corliss

I have written a picture book that is based on my daughters. You know, my youngest one likes to tell everybody, 'Mommy wrote 'Best Day Ever' about us.' Which is true. — Gayle Forman

Why a child needs a picture book?
Experts explain why the illustration is so important in the narrative and give tips on how to choose a picture book for your children.

By turning an idea into something reality, illustrated book further fuels the child's fantasy. Recent research on teaching concluded that the best performing students are not the ones who read the classics. The important thing is to allow children access to a variety of reading styles and the pleasure of choosing what they want to read. — Jessie Zane Carter

'Santa Sangre' is the picture I love the best, myself, because 'El Topo' and 'The Holy Mountain' I made with my head, and 'Santa Sangre' I made with my feelings, with my heart. It's an emotional picture. And it's more real for me, that picture. — Alejandro Jodorowsky