35 Iconic Film Quotes

There's something magical about a great film quote. It's the perfect blend of dialogue, delivery, and moment that etches itself into our collective memory, transcending the screen to become part of our everyday conversations. Whether it's a line that makes us laugh, cry, or feel an exhilarating rush of inspiration, iconic film quotes have a unique way of capturing the essence of the movies we love. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 35 iconic film quotes that have left an indelible mark on audiences everywhere. Let's dive into these unforgettable moments and relive the magic.

1. “I know the best moments can never be captured on film, even as I spend nearly half my life trying to do just that.” - Rosie O'Donnell

2. “Up until then, whenever anyone had mentioned the possibility of making a film adaptation, my answer had always been, ‘No, I’m not interested.’ I believe that each reader creates his own film inside his head, gives faces to the characters, constructs every scene, hears the voices, smells the smells. And that is why, whenever a reader goes to see a film based on a novel that he likes, he leaves feeling disappointed, saying: ‘the book is so much better than the film.” - Paulo Coelho

3. “Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want.” - Martha Grimes

4. “It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.” - Roger Ebert

5. “Film lovers are sick people.” - François Truffaut

6. “Ever director has at least 10 bad films in them.” - Robert Rodriguez

7. “Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief…. Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A bas l’originalité, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons us as it creates. Vive le vol-pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight.” - William Burroughs

8. “In my experience there are billions of dollars available for pieces of shit. As soon as the material distinguishes itself by something interesting, financing becomes a problem.” - Rutger Hauer

9. “The dangerous temptation of wildlife films is that they can lull us into thinking we can get by without the original models -- that we might not need animals in the flesh.” - Doug Peacock

10. “The traveling salesmen fed me pills that made the lining of my veins feel scraped out, my jaw ached... I knew every raindrop by its name, I sensed everything before it happened. Like I knew a certain oldsmobile would stop even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside, I knew we'd have an accident in the rain. I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way.” - Denis Johnson

11. “Over the years, I have been subjected to many indignities, all for the sake of Art. If I ever catch him, I'm going to kill the guy.” - Bob Hope

12. “In this image-driven age, wildlife filmmakers carry a heavy responsibility. They can influence how we think and behave when we’re in nature. They can even influence how we raise our kids, how we vote and volunteer in our communities, as well as the future of our wildlands and wildlife. If the stories they create are misleading or false in some way, viewers will misunderstand the issues and react in inappropriate ways. People who consume a heavy diet of wildlife films filled with staged violence and aggression, for example, are likely to think about nature as a circus or a freak show. They certainly won’t form the same positive connections to the natural world as people who watch more thoughtful, authentic, and conservation-oriented films.” - Chris Palmer

13. “It's tough, man. Unless it's a tentpole, sequel, remake, or over-the-top comedy, that's all the studios are even doing. They've kind of admitted they're not in the business of doing anything else. The slightest level of irony or intelligence and, boom, you're out of the league, you're done.” - Richard Linklater

14. “Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged by male energy.” - Bjork

15. “Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?” - David Mamet

16. “people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.” - Charles Bukowski

17. “...When the bespangled Miss Charisse wraps her phenomenal legs around [Fred] Astaire, she can be forgiven everything—even the fact that she reads her lines as if she learned them phonetically.” - Pauline Kael

18. “In a way, what Tarantino has done with the French New Wave and with David Lynch is what Pat Boone did with rhythm and blues: He's found (ingeniously) a way to take what is ragged and distinctive and menacing about their work and homogenize it, churn it until it's smooth and cool and hygienic enough for mass consumption. Reservoir Dogs, for example, with its comically banal lunch chatter, creepily otiose code names, and intrusive soundtrack of campy pop from decades past, is a Lynch movie made commercial, i.e., fast, linear, and with what was idiosyncratically surreal now made fashionably (i.e., "hiply") surreal [...] D. Lynch is an exponentially better filmmaker than Q. Tarantino. For, unlike Tarantino, D. Lynch knows that an act of violence in an American film has, through repetition and desensitization, lost the ability to refer to anything but itself. A better way to put what I just tried to say: Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.” - David Foster Wallace

19. “Only the past is real.” - Frank Lentricchia

20. “Our personal past is only available to us now through black-and-white film, it's a medium for communication with the dead, including our dead selves, the way we used to be, which is why we're drawn to it.” - Frank Lentricchia

21. “That's the illusion of stillness. There is no secret. Only the implication of one by its possesor".” - David Gilmour

22. “R means under 18 accompanied by an adult. Therefore all corporately funded films in the US must be made with the concept that those under the age of 18 are able to view the film. This means all corporately funded films in the US are made for the eyes of children.” - Crispin H. Glover

23. “OK, publishing a book and releasing a movie is all very well, but Tottenham beating Man. U. 3-2... priceless.” - Salman Rushdie

24. “The body lay outside an abandoned, boarded-up theater. The theater had started as a first-run movie house, many years back when the neighborhood had still been fashionable. As the neighborhood began rotting, the theater began showing second-run films, and then old movies, and finally foreign-language films.” - Ed McBain

25. “I admire nudity and I like sex, and so did a lot of people in the Thirties. But, to me, overexposure blunts the fun…Sex as something beautiful may soon disappear. Once it was a knife so finely honed the edge was invisible until it was touched and then it cut deep. Now it is so blunt that it merely bruises and leaves ugly marks. Nudity is fine in the privacy of my own bedroom with the appropriate partner. Or for a model in life class at art school. Or as portrayed in stone and paint. But I don’t like it used as a joke or to titillate. Or be so bloody frank about.” - Mary Astor

26. “The first time we did cavalry charge I was so breathless with excitement I nearly fell off the horse. I actually saw stars in front of my eyes and thought I was going to faint. The second time I had a bit more control but was still giddy with excitement. And the third time I was an emotional wreck. I had to really try hard not to cry.” - Benedict Cumberbatch

27. “I'm lucky enough to be able to make films and so I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears and all those things with my work. That's an enormous privilege. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.” - Michael Haneke

28. “The function of camera movement is to assist the storytelling. That's all it is. It cannot be there just to demonstrate itself.” - Mike Figgis

29. “Films are not primarily an entertainment medium. They are weapons. If you understand that, then you are ready to pursue filmmaking as a vocation.” - Isaac Botkin

30. “Kon’s films present a fractured, multifaceted world in which everyone has their own different reality.” - Andrew Osmond

31. “Summer movie idea: take all the sequels that are out right now, and make movies about their backstories.” - Stephen Colbert

32. “Painting, by its nature, cannot provide an object of simultaneous collective reception... as film is able to do today... And while efforts have been made to present paintings to the masses in galleries and salons, this mode of reception gives the masses no means of organizing and regulating their response. Thus, the same public which reacts progressively to a slapstick comedy inevitably displays a backward attitude toward Surrealism.” - Walter Benjamin

33. “I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.” - Georges Duhamel

34. “To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider... To all actresses who have played actresses, to all women who act, to all men who act and become women, to all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother. - Dedication, Todo Sobre Mi Madre” - Pedro Almodóvar

35. “In America, film is the highest form of art that the public aspires to. People will come to me and say ‘Oh, your book was so good, they ought to make a movie out of it!’ To which I reply ‘Well, why? It’s already a book.” - Orson Scott Card