M.H. Abrams Quotes

I never said I had no idea about most of the things you said I said I had no idea about.

Pessimism is rife in Israel.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned, it seems, to direct the Middle East policy of the Obama administration.

Persecution of Christians is growing around the world, and Congress needs to pay more attention to it.

Israel's flexibility is dependent on its sense of security.

There are no Muslim ghettos in the U.S.

Syria's population is 74% Sunni Muslim.

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.

There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro.

Libya as a country is a relatively new concept. The period of Libya as a modern nation really starts after World War II.

On taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama put Israeli settlements at the center of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

After 9/11, we did see Palestinian terrorism in the context of all terrorism.

Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the 'international community' developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.

The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so that they can handle an increased flow of aid.

During most of the Bush administration, human rights and democracy in Egypt were on the front burner.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.

Reformist kings can save their dynasties now by helping their countries move smoothly into democracy, or they will end their years in exile like the Russian aristocrats of a century earlier.

I think that the very fact that CBS fought and fought and fought in Texas, in New York.

The government understands - every government, every administration, both parties, understands - that that power, they just don't have.

I really do think that if we had lost that case we would really live in a country that would be really quite different.

I can tell you, having been in court today in New York, that the requests for the video outtakes have been dropped.

I just had the sense that at least the books that I had read about law just didn't really have enough of that.

Don't sell your story, just tell your story.

Pitching is always a weird, difficult thing.

As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it is.

I'm not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people's imaginations.

I think that the success of the film is as much about it being something that families could share as anything else.

Whenever a toddler sees a pile of blocks, he wants to tear it down.

I love recording music.

I try to work on shows that I would want to watch.

I was just like, "I want to make a decent 2-D movie." I was so worried that, instead of being a decent 2-D movie, it would have been a bad 3-D one.

I love movies with spectacle but spectacle can be a performance, it doesn't have to be a creature.

I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.

I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a personality.

People never know what they want, though everyone says they do. If they did, nobody would ever be surprised.

When I was a kid going into the movies, you weren't force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.

All I know is that I've made some big screw-ups, and I've done some things that have done all right. I just keep trying to learn from the mistakes I've made.

To me the interesting main character is never the one without flaws.

I think that even if you're wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be.

Ratings have changed, viewer habits have changed and the options for the audience have grown enormously, but I don't think how you tell a story is fundamentally different.

But I'm grateful for everyone who would want to read a spoiler because it means that they care and want to see the movie. I know what it feels like, as an enormous Star Wars fan myself.

I think admitting youre an addict is the first step towards recovery.

My work isn't any more important than anything else in the family

Approaching any movie with a three in the title you know you are not going to get a political polemic. You are not going to get some sort of political statement or ultra-deep message.

On movies like Star Trek and Star Wars, you have so much that will be created or extended digitally, and it's a slippery slope where you can get lost in a world of synthetic.

I'm not as optimistic as Gene Roddenberry was. I fall somewhere in the middle. But as a romantic, I like to think things are going to get bigger rather than worse.

The magic that works, to me, is the magic that feels completely grounded and real and tangible.

Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, painters have been examining for a long time.

I've just been lucky to work on things that I felt would be cool to see. It's not that I had a strategy or anything.

All the times I've been lucky enough to be a part of a show that's actually gotten on the air, it's always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear.