Roger Ebert

“Start. Don’t look back. If at the end it doesn’t meet your hopes, start again. Now you know more about your hopes.”

“We are poor mortals, but it dreams to us that we can fly.”

“I find that when I am actually writing, I enter a zone of concentration too small to admit my troubles.”

“We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.”

“There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.”

“All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.”

“In thinking about 'depressing movies,' many people don't realize that all bad movies are depressing, and no good movies are.”

“At the end of the day, some authors will endure and most, including some very good ones, will not. Why do I think reading is important? It is such an effective medium between mind and mind. We think largely in words. A medium made only of words doesn't impose the barrier of any other medium. It is naked and unprotected communication. That's how you get pregnant. May you always be so.”

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.”

“I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me.”

“Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.”

“If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didn't.”

“A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the room.”

“Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?”

“We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.”

“My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven’t read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may — need is the word I use — to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill’s history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.”

“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try.”

“Every great film should seem new every time you see it."Roger Ebert”

“Life always has an unhappy ending, but you can have a lot of fun along the way, and everything doesn't have to be dripping in deep significance.”

“Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.”

“The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don't wait for her. Start alone.”

“Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immediately what could have happened, and that it never will.”

“All I know is, it is better to be the whale than the squid.”

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.”

“Sparks recently went on record as saying he is a greater novelist than Cormac McCarthy. This is true in the same sense that I am a better novelist than William Shakespeare. Sparks also said his novels are like Greek Tragedies. This may actually be true. I can't check it out because, tragically, no really bad Greek tragedies have survived.”

“Dear Bill (O'Reilly)...I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!”

“The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.”

“Nicholas Sparks recently went on record as saying he is a greater novelist than Cormac McCarthy. This is true in the same sense that I am a better novelist than William Shakespeare.”

“(1) the Muse visits during, not before, the act of composition, and (2) the writer takes dictation from that place in his mind that knows what he should write next.-from a review by Roger Ebert of film "Starting Out In the Evening" (2007).http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/p...”

“Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself entertained. It gives you a better chance of an interesting job.”

“I began to realize that I had tended to avoid some people because of my instant conclusions about who they were and what they would have to say. I discovered that everyone, speaking honestly and openly, had important things to tell me.”

“What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable.”

“Gene Siskel used to describe old-age makeup as making young actors look like turtles.”

“No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.”

“It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.”

“Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly. ”