David Quotes

I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art.

Perhaps that's what we're all looking for - desire undiluted by habit.

Part of the writer's task is to recognize what he's done, then dive back in and make the connections clearer. I'm a strong believer in getting things right the ninth or tenth time.

The human being is like a light bulb. If a human being is super stressed, depressed and filled with negativity, this is what that human being radiates out into the world.

One change of attitude would change everything. If everyone realized that it could be a beautiful world and said, 'let's not do these things anymore - let's have fun.'

There are only 24 hours in a day, and my top priority is working on my films, but I love short film experiments.

O grant me, Heaven, a middle state, Neither too humble nor too great; More than enough, for nature's ends, With something left to treat my friends.

Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.

I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.

As long as the protagonist wants something, the audience will want something.

No one enjoys being equal.

There is no such thing as character other than the habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousand years ago.

Show business is and has always been a depraved carnival.

The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.

Almost all movie scripts contain material that cannot be filmed.

There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue.

For it is written that just as it is forbidden to partake of the forbidden, it is forbidden not to partake of the permitted.

Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting f***ed.

One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.

We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.

I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else.

The terror and beauty of the dream come from the connection of previously unrelated mundanities of life.

The pain of losing is diverting. So is the thrill of winning. Winning, however, is lonelier, as those you've won money from are not likely to commiserate with you. Winning takes getting used to.

War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.

Each culture has its own form of staged combat, evolved from its particular method of street fighting and cleaned up for presentation as a spectacle, e.g. savate, Cornish wrestling, karate, kung-fu.

They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.

Stories were primarily verbal to begin with. Before there were cave paintings, stories were told over generations. We tell each other thousands of stories in the course of everyday life.

People who know, know. The others, it really doesn't matter.

The decent docent doesn't doze; He teaches standing on his toes. His students dassn't doze and does, And that's what teaching is and was.

How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?

In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century. The largest, most powerful force ever set forth from Britain or any nation.

They must be cool but determined...he threatened instant death to any man who showed cowardice.

We honor our heroic and patriotic dead by being true men, as true men by faithfully fighting the battles of our day as they fought the battles of their day.

Reality is the page. Life is the word.

If I want to act relaxed, it's going to take all my cunning, skill, and concentration.

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

Memories are their own descendents masquerading as the ancestors of the present.

Only professional diplomats, inveterate idiots and women view diplomacy as a long-term substitute for war.

I remain thankful to God for all his mercies.

There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.

I'm not from a milieu where high-register language or philosophical ideas were welcome.

The extreme possibilities are the most illuminating.

Don’t keep fighting battles that are already lost.

You've got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it's unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it'll be a cyanide capsule.

The city had defeated her, just like they said it would. Like some overcrowded party, no one had noticed her arrival, and would notice if she left.

Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.

Great people attract great people. The quality of your team can play a big role in employee happiness.

What we need are lots of girls who aren't as good as us, who'll treat us with the proper respect and reverance.

As a director, I only know how to do it one way, is to pour my heart and soul into everything.

"We don't take sufficient time to meditate." I get up early in the morning...five o'clock, when my mind and spirit are clear and rested. Then I meditate.