Larry Wall Quotes

When I did The X-Files, there was certainly less of that because the script was as it was and it was such a wonderful script and it was quite complex and there wasn't a hell of a lot of improvising I could do to bring to the table, but I guess what I did bring was a sense of self and that the reason I was cast was because I did come across as someone who possibly was only human for a short time.

We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun.

Really, I'm a neurotic perfectionist. Every single word in the script is the one that I want.

Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we cannot avoid it.... If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather than part of its solution.

I don't like reading scripts very much. I like it better for someone to just explain to me what it is about this story.

Life is like a B-picture script.

Having just read the script [Havenhurst] and then add having seen a ghost, I went to Andrew [Erin], and I was, like, "Okay, I have to do this movie. I just have to! I don't know why, but I just have to do it." And I ended up getting the role.

A lot of times, the script is the thing they care about least.

The better the script, the less money there is. That's just the economics of the studio system.

The shell is America's most active contribution to the formation of character. A tough hide. Grow it early.

Once you crack the script, everything else follows.

People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.

I think you have to be true to the script that you're given.

I've never known a situation in my career where a terrible script turned into a movie that was out of this world or was a success.

For me, most comedy scripts fail in the mechanical playing-out of the setup. They'll pay lip service to a moral lesson or a psychological progression.

Without being good enough, I started figuring out how to make my way through the minefield of a script, which is what it was to me at the time, and the rest is semi-history.

And I sit in my jacuzzi with my script.

[My kitten] is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I know you will delight in her.

You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.

There is no script. Live your life. Soak it all in.

Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay were caricatures - they were easy to spot. They were almost psychopaths. But it's much harder to spot problems at companies like Royal Dutch [Shell].

With any mannerisms or dialogue, you have to be careful you're not just serving yourself. What happens with improving is a lot of times, if you're not in the framework of the script, you're just making everything easier so it fits you. It's much more interesting and challenging to go to it, rather than it coming to you.

When you go on a movie set, there used to be one woman: script supervisor. Now they were in all capacities in addition to heading studios. So that's the biggest change of all from the early '50s, when I first started.

Actors tend to not know how their performances are going to actually be used. Even though the script says one thing, in the edit, it can be something else.

All those words of praise they use for novels - spare, economical. Why should I shell out £17 for economical?