Roger Ebert Quotes

In episodic TV you have to keep things secret to keep the viewer in suspense.

I hate when you see a film and after one scene you know what's going to happen and you can predict the whole story.

I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader.

For me, the worst writing generally just 'flips' things: this person's really a traitor; it was all a dream; etc. Nothing is so ruinous as a forced 'twist,' I think.

A film based on a jolly good John Grisham book is fine, but I like to get a bit under the skin.

I didn't make 'The Sixth Sense' because I thought the ending wouldn't work!

Jeff Eastin is good in that he'll tell me a plot twist that's coming up if he thinks it would be something Peter would know ahead of time, and if it's something that would be a surprise to Peter, I'll tell Jeff, 'Oh, don't tell me. I don't want to know.' And then it's exciting to read it and exciting to play it.

There are secrets at the heart of every story; there is something that must be uncovered or discovered, both by the reader and by the characters.

I don't like spoilers. I don't like things being spoiled.

If you can't believe a little in what you see on the screen, it's not worth wasting your time on cinema.

Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

Used properly, cinema is the coolest thing in the world.

From my own internal fanboy perspective, there's nothing that I hate more than seeing a three minute trailer for a movie where I feel like it's shown me the entire movie.

Before 'Wings' came out, I told a few people that at the end of book one, readers should think Laurel made the right choice. Then, at the end of 'Spells,' they should understand why Laurel made the choice she did.

That's kind of the weird thing that M. Night Shyamalan has sort of unleashed upon the world is this need for every movie to have these ridiculous endings.

'The Sixth Sense' is fine the second time around, but honestly, the first time around, it's dazzling.

I'm so tired of stories starting, 'Maud Jones was walking her dog down Broadway.' You've got to go over to the back page somewhere to finally find out the damn dog was run over by a truck. Get the thing told, for heaven's sake. Everybody doesn't have to be an O. Henry.

With 'Broken Harbour,' a third of the way through, I worked it out and had to go back and bloody rewrite.

A script like 'The Sixth Sense' is fun to read: It's so well-written, and you get a vivid sense of what's going to be onscreen.

I hate it when it is all about the twist and when the ending comes out of nowhere. I think you should be surprised and shocked, but you should also think, 'Damn, I should have seen it,' because there are clues all the way through.

I wish I'd walked out of 'The Tourist' with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. I said to the missus after two minutes, 'He's her husband.' An hour and a half's worth of nonsense later, the big twist at the end is... he's her husband.

When you're watching a Hitchcock movie, you, for most of the movie, are playing the guessing game. What's the endgame? What's the plot? How are these people involved? It's the best way to tell the story, and as a viewer, that's what you want to experience.

Every single moment in 'Hereditary' is linked to a moment in the end for the payoff. I think it has the ability of captivating people the same way that 'Manchester By the Sea' did. It has that audience because it's so wrapped in human drama.

Well you know, the big trick with 'Saw,' the sleight of hand that you have to pull off is that - spoiler alert - the bad guy, the antagonist, is right there in front of your face, literally.

Spoilers are inevitable.