Cinematech Home Quotes & Sayings

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings.' It is to turn the world into this world. ('This world'! As if there were any other.)
The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have. — Susan Sontag

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places. — Joan Didion

No matter what time of year it's always funny when a person walks by me dressed in religious garb and I say Happy Halloween! — Gary Gulman

It has become fashionable in Washington to argue that Obamacare cannot be reversed. That is nonsense. It's a fight worth waging, and a fight which can be won. — Bobby Jindal

Our first gig was a battle of the bands. We did 45 minutes of comedy and never played a note - and we won! — Cheech Marin

Most important of all: in our anxiety to "improve" the world and insure "progress" we have permitted our schools to become laboratories for social and economic change according to the predilections of the professional educators. We have forgotten that the proper function of the school is to transmit the cultural heritage of one generation to the next generation, and to so train the minds of the new generation as to make them capable of absorbing ancient learning and applying it to the problem of its own day. The — Barry M. Goldwater

We can do better ... We can't ignore the inequalities that persist in our justice system that undermine our most deeply held values of fairness and equality. — Hillary Clinton

I love Ice Cube and Charlie Day. They're brilliant men, great actors and very funny people. — Tracy Morgan

Maybe I still haven't become me. I don't know how you tell for sure when you finally have. — Emily M. Danforth

Martial arts are art forms and require a great deal of discipline and dedication. I so admire people who focus their lives on it, because it's not an easy thing to do. — Lucy Liu

Her lungs, like moldering cheesecloth sacks, hung visible between cracked and yellowing ribs. Her internal organs, long absent, only flaked brown gristle clung to her spine. Sparse clumps of pale hair clung to the few shreds of flesh still gripping her skull. Five other Cotardist assassins stood mutely behind her. Though none looked to be such an advanced state of decay, they all showed signs of rot and neglect. — Michael R. Fletcher