Pauline Kael Quotes

Take a film of Jacques Tati like Mon Oncle which has something quite new - for me, unique - in it.

I liked Truffaut a lot, I've felt a lot of admiration for his way to address the audience, and his storytelling.... La nuit américaine is adorable, and another film I like to see is L'enfant sauvage, with its fine humanism.

Meditation will work on anyone who has a functioning human nervous system. All you need is the intelligence to follow simple instructions. Even children as young as 4 and 5 have been taught to meditate successfully.

If we have a simple existence, we shall feel how happy and how fortunate we are. There are some people who are of the opinion that simplicity is almost tantamount to stupidity. But simplicity and stupidity are like the North Pole and the South Pole. One can be as simple as a child and, at the same time, one can have boundless knowledge, light and wisdom.

The only man, woman, or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors "is dead."

Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern.

Will Ferrell and I are teaming up again on a film called Daddy's Home. In the movie I play a Special-Ops soldier who has just discovered that Will Ferrell's character is married to my ex-wife and is my children's stepfather. So, I have to come home and try to win them back and take him out.

New York critics - I hear when one of them watched "A Star Is Born", he talked back to the screen.

One small changed family doesn't calculate into a world that has been spinning for a billion years. But one small change makes the world spin differently in a billion ways for one family.

People should not pass judgment until they have seen the film.

The main thing is that everything become simple, easy enough for a child to understand.

Twenty-six years ago the highest court in this land did an incredible thing. They issued a Supreme Court decision that really boils down to one simple and profoundly evil idea: They said that our unborn children have no rights that the rest of us are bound to respect. And when they made that decision they unleashed on America an unbelievable event that has undermined who we are and what we believe.

Seeing David Mackenzie's work in "Starred Up," I thought that was a wonderful film.

The child is naturally meditative. He is a sort of samadhi; he's coming out of the womb of existence. His life river is yset absolutely fresh, just from the source. He knows the truth, but he does not know that he knows.... His knowledge is not yet aware. It is innocent. It is simply there, as a matter of fact. And he is not separate from his knowledge; he is his knowledge. He has not mind, he has simple being.

One of the things that's kind of persistent is that I am the model on the cover of Tom Waits' album, Small Change.

Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That's not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.

I don't even want to discuss Flashdance. I'm no critic, but that's an interesting phenomenon, that picture.

My children grew up very resourceful and strong in spite of them having to live with different families and that I had to drag them all over the country with me.

The sound of the sea, the curve of a horizon, wind in leaves, the cry of a bird leave manifold impression in us. And suddenly, without our wishing it at all, one of these memories spills from us and finds expression in musical language...I want to sing my interior landscape with the simple artlessness of a child.

You read reviews by top reviewers of films that not only had remarkably interesting scores, but films whose effectiveness was absolutely enhanced, and frequently created by the music, yet the reviewers seem unaware that their emotions and their nervous reactions to the films have been affected by the scoring. This is a serious flaw. Any film reviewer owes it to himself, and the public, to take every element of the film into account.

It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism. And there's so many expectations involved, too. You're going in to see the latest Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick film, you really have high hopes, and you can't help but find that it's not exactly what you had in your head going in. Until you can watch it again, you can't accept the work for what it intends to be. It takes at least a second viewing.

Kevin Feige and I have very smart people who work for us, who make sure that we see everything. And that we actually see everything. They see everything, tell us about it, we see it. You have to have people who work with you, who say 'you have to look at this film'. And then you look at it. You really have to look at it. You have to look at movies all the time.

Sure, it's simple, writing for kids... Just as simple as bringing them up.

The simple dignity of a child drinking a bowl of milk embodies the fascination of an ancient rite.

I think the film [Dream of Life] is life-affirming.