Lonergan Quotes & Sayings

God is utterly simple; for every composite being necessarily has a cause of its own composition, and so, since God is the first principle of all things, there can be no real composition whatever in God. Now, in an utterly simple being there can be nothing that is not that simple being itself. In God, therefore, whatever really is, is the same as God, is the same as that which is, is the same as that which subsists, and hence necessarily subsists. — Bernard Lonergan

I grew up going to the movies, not watching them on television, so I'm still a bit resistant to TV as a medium. — Kenneth Lonergan

Be attentive, be intelligent, be responsible, be loving, and if necessary, change. — Bernard Lonergan

Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people. — Kenneth Lonergan

I find it very invigorating having Ken Lonergan, who's an established, Pulitzer-nominated playwright doing Howards End, or Chris Hampton who's won an Oscar writing a TV series, or having an actor like Mark Rylance, who is probably England's leading theater actor, in the lead in Wolf Hall. — Colin Callender

Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, an invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of understanding, — Bernard Lonergan

Discovery is new beginning. It is the origin of new rules that supplement, or even supplant, the old. Genius is creative. It is genius precisely because it disregards established routines, because it originates the novelties that will be the routines of the future. Were there rules for discovery, then discoveries would be mere conclusions. — Bernard Lonergan

Total surrender to the demands of the human spirit: be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love. — Bernard Lonergan

For it is in the field where meaning is constitutive that man's freedom reaches its highest point. There too his responsibility is greatest. There there occurs the emergence of his existential subject, finding out for himself that he has to decide for himself what he is to make of himself. — Bernard Lonergan

It's not a character flaw to become an adult. — Kenneth Lonergan

I like to let the actors work the way they want to. — Kenneth Lonergan

You can shoot a film in New York without seeing the Empire State Building. Or Starbucks ... although the latter is much less realistic. — Kenneth Lonergan

The church always arrives on the scene a little breathless and a little late. — Bernard Lonergan

Faith ... is a conscious apprehension of something inevident, something which unlike this desk and this chair is not seen to be there, even if it enters into the fabric of our personal relations to reality with at least as much force, relevance, and moment as things which are seen to be there. — Bernard Lonergan

If one denies that, when the meaning is true, then the meant is what is so, one rejects propositional truth. If the rejection is universal, then it is the self-destructive proposition that there are no true propositions. If the rejection is limited to the dogmas, then it is just a roundabout way of saying that all the dogmas are false. — Bernard Lonergan

The fulfilment that is being in love with God is not the product of our knowledge and choice. It is God's gift. Like all being in love, as distinct from particular acts of loving, it is a first principle. So far from resulting from our knowledge and choice, it dismantles and abolishes the horizon within which our knowing and choosing went on, and it sets up a new horizon within which the love of God transvalues our values and the eyes of that love transform our knowing. — Bernard Lonergan

In philosophy an individual is becoming himself. — Bernard Lonergan

I trust my judgment when I think it's boring, dull, tepid and not interesting. That's important to listen to. And the same on the set. That's a little easier because you can see it in front of you and you can just see how great they are and you know you have something wonderful when they do something wonderful. — Kenneth Lonergan

One cannot play fast and loose with what one knows to be true. — Bernard J.F. Lonergan

No matter what your logic is, if it is coherent, you can develop a technique to express it. — Bernard Lonergan

I feel like if you can describe something fully and accurately, then people will be able to see it themselves - they don't need be told what to. — Kenneth Lonergan

To demand the absolute and to be content with absolutely nothing else results in a skepticism. — Bernard J.F. Lonergan

Little kids grow up discovering the world that's shown to them and then when you become a teenager, it kind of shrinks a little bit. I think when you get past that point, one of the important things is that you see there is more to the world than yourself. — Kenneth Lonergan

There's something about the impact of a big screen that means something to me, even though I realize almost every film is fated to be seen for a year in theaters, and then forever after on television. — Kenneth Lonergan

I wrote a play once called 'Lobby Hero,' which I thought turned out very well, but there's no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home. — Kenneth Lonergan

I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish. — Kenneth Lonergan

Choice is a determinant in personal development ... by my free acts I am making myself. — Bernard Lonergan

When you have people like Casey [Affleck] and Michelle Williams and they want to do more takes you don't say, "Sorry, that's it." And I also don't like to say, "It's fine, it's great." Unless it's clearly there. — Kenneth Lonergan

Some actors really like to do only a few, some like Casey [Affleck] will do as many takes as there is electrical power. At some point, you'll say, "Listen, I think it's really good." And he'll say, "You sure? You sure? There's not some other way we should try it?" — Kenneth Lonergan

Teenagers all think their life is a movie. If you break up with someone or you have a fight, you walk around with movie scores playing in your head. You sort of see yourself suffering as you're suffering. There's a lot of melodrama attached to the real events of your life. — Kenneth Lonergan

I often find myself writing about people taking care of each other, or trying to. And often seem to write about situations that are too big for the characters. — Kenneth Lonergan

It is in the measure that special methods acknowledge their common core in transcendental method, that norms common to all the sciences will be acknowledged, that a secure basis will be attained for tackling interdisciplinary problems, and that the sciences will be mobilized within a higher unity of vocabulary, thought and orientation, in which they will be able to make their quite significant contribution to the solution of fundamental problems. — Bernard Lonergan

Freely the subject makes himself what he is, never in this life is the making finished, always it is in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter. — Bernard Lonergan

I actually think storyboards are great. I don't draw well enough to do them myself. I've only used storyboards a couple of times. — Kenneth Lonergan

I'm always struck when I go somewhere I've never been before, especially if it's in my home town, by just how different the atmosphere can be, and how disorienting it can be - especially if there's any kind of trouble. — Kenneth Lonergan

I still haven't quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with dialogue in movies. — Kenneth Lonergan

There's a few people who I've accumulated over the years who I really trust to show a first cut to and to be helpful rather than unhelpful. — Kenneth Lonergan