Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation, ' I say, 'Your salary.'

These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equaled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.

The words I am... are potent words; be careful what you hitch to them. The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.

The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters -- there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void. That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.

Brief is life but love is long. Alfred Lord Tennyson

Hitchhiker No No, no, not 6 I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 minutes You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel. Ted That -- good point. Hitchhiker 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 doors. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office. Ted Why Hitchhiker 'Cause you're fired

Drama is life with the dull parts cut out of it.

For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

Fettucine Alfredo is just Macaroni and cheese for adults

There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Plan more than you can do, then do it. Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it. Hitch your wagon to a star, keep your seat, and there you are

The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.

I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.

Television has brought back murder into the home -- where it belongs.

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don't want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.

Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.

There are two kinds of sparks, the one that goes off with a hitch like a match, but it burns quickly. The other is the kind that needs time, but when the flame strikes...it's eternal, don't forget that.

This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book- it makes a very poor doorstop.

A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry.

Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

The past is a guide post, not a hitching post.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.

The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book -- it makes a very poor doorstop.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

For whereas the mind works in possibilities, the intuitions work in actualities, and what you intuitively desire, that is possible to you. Whereas what you mentally or 'consciously' desire is nine times out of ten impossible; hitch your wagon to star, or you will just stay where you are.

I never said actors were cattle. I said that actors should be treated like cattle.

Imagine a world without Darwin. Imagine a world in which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace had not transformed our understanding of living things. What... would become baffling and puzzling..., in urgent need of explanation? The answer is: practically everything about living things....

Television has brought murder back into the home-- where it belongs.

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.

Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.