Memorable Quotes Quotes

A thing said walks in immortality if it has been said well.

Chad Radwell lines are very, very quotable.

Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on.

My favorite phrase, that a friend of mine who worked on the Potter films and was a lot older than me would use in front of me, and I picked up from him many great phrases - the English have a lot of great idioms for sweating. I don't know why that is. But that's what we do. I feel like it's particularly our country; probably everywhere has a lot of idioms for sweating. He always said, "I'm sweating like a glassblower's asshole," which I always found an incredibly strange and yet vivid image.

I won't forget those kind of things, but I just want to write them down and look at them. It's almost like when things like music come out and you're listening to a song and you have experiences with art or phenomena that supersede your simple relationship with them as just a piece of art. They're more than that. That's just what those quote are for me. They're big, they're important.

Aphorisms are literature's hand luggage. Light and compact, they fit easily into the overhead compartment of your brain.

I think people in the future will come up to me and say, "Everything that you are and everything that you have is because of that butler [film]." Of course, that's Oprah's line from the movie, but I think it will resonate with my legacy with the movie.

Someone — Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? — once said that anything that can be read twice is literature; I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable.

I watched 'The Sopranos,' I saw a couple of episodes of 'Mad Men.' I loved 'Seinfeld.' In fact, I got some CDs of 'Seinfeld.' 'Seinfeld' was hilarious. Oh, boy. The Nazi soup kitchen? 'No soup for you!'

I want to make movies like 'The Upside of Anger,' 'Maria Full of Grace,' old-school films like 'Some Kind of Wonderful' or 'Vision Quest': movies you remember songs and lines from.

It seems pointless to be quoted if one isn't going to be quotable ... it's better to be quotable than honest.

I know, there are so many great lines [in Tommy Boy]. People say to me, "Did you eat paint chips for a living?" Or, "These shoes are worth more than your life." And the one I get all the time is, "Brothers don't shake hands, brothers gotta hug!"

... I could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes - which is the afterlife of a graduation speech.

Phrases that have historical significance or become headlines don't just magically appear in the moment. They are mindfully planned.

I think I've had a certain amount of success at making phrases. I'm a good writer. But obviously, I'm incredibly flattered and pleased when people remember things that I say.

When people quote sketches to me, half the time I don't know what they're talking about so I have to sort of go, aha, yes, oh yep, I remember that and lie my way out of it.