Putting people in a room and strapping wires to their wrist to find out if I make them tingle when I'm telling them about Beirut i...s a long way from Edward R. Murrow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alicia Huberman: Look, I'll make it easy for you. The time has come when you must tell me that you have a wife and two adorable ch...ildren, and this madness between us can't go on any longer. T.R. Devlin: I bet you've heard that line often enough. Alicia: Right below the belt every time. Oh that isn't fair, Dev. Devlin: Skip it. We have other things to talk about. We have a job.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Captain Prescott: I don't like this. I don't like her coming here. Mr. Beardsley: She's had me worried for some time, a woman... of that sort. T.R. Devlin: What sort is that, Mr. Beardsley? Mr. Beardsley: I don't think any of us have any illusions about her character, have we Devlin? Devlin: Not at all. Not in the slightest. Miss Huberman is first, last, and always not a lady. She may be risking her life, but when it comes to being a lady, she doesn't hold a candle to your wife, sir, sitting in Washington playing bridge with three other ladies of great honor and virtue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses ye...t lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Charles Foster Kane: You always said you wanted to live in a palace. Susan Alexander: Oh, a person could go crazy in this dum...p. Nobody to talk to, nobody to have any fun with. Charles Foster Kane: Susan. Susan Alexander: Forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but scenery and statues. I'm lonely.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for the... eighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is one of the worst speeches I've ever seen. No one will listen except the Mobil P.R. man. List what we want to say M arrange... items in order of priority M then say them plainly and bluntly.... Hit hard and early. Don't apologize or evade tough issues.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tell mother that however dogs and samovars might behave themselves, winter comes after summer, old age after youth, and misfortune... follows happiness (or the other way around). A person can not be healthy and cheerful throughout life. Losses lie waiting and man can not safeguard against death, even if he be Alexander of Macedonia. One must be prepared for anything and consider everything to be inevitably essential, as sad as that may be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whatever else it may be--stimulus, tranquilizer, aural nipple, too of executives, Muzak is basically trivializing. It is not simpl...y that it relegates music to the province of wallpaper. Background music never need be banal. When it is used in support of drama, it can greatly enhance without harming itself. Mozart was entirely amenable to such films as Elvira Madigan and The French Lieutenant's Woman; Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote aptly for The Invaders, Arnold Bax for Oliver Twist, Sergei Prokofiev for Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky, Dmitri Shostakovich for others. In such uses, music collaborates with artists, it becomes an art among arts. But Muzak collaborates chiefly with management: it is used as an aural smoke-screen, a form of jamming, a hormone in the henhouse, an emollient in cemeteries.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I thought when I was a young man that I would conquer the world with truth. I thought I would lead an army greater than Alexander ...ever dreamed of. Not to conquer nations, but to liberate mankind with truth, with the golden sound of the word. But only a few of them heard, only a few of you understood. The rest of you put on black and sat in chapel. Why do you come here? Why do you? Dress your hypocrisy in black and parade before your God on Sunday. From love--no. For you've shown that your hearts are too withered to receive the love of your divine father. I know why you've come. I've seen it in your faces, Sunday after Sunday. Fear has brought you here. Horrible, superstitious fear. Fear of divine retribution. A bolt of fire from the skies. The vengeance of the Lord and the justice of God. But you have forgotten the love of Jesus. You disregard His sacrifice. Death. Fear. Flames. Horror. And black clothes. Hold your meeting then, but know if you do this in the name of good and the house of God, against Him and His word you blaspheme.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »