Quotations: Wisdom, Wit, and Movies

Today, this is my favorite quote: It’s not enough for a gardener to love flowers; he must hate weeds. I don’t know who wrote it, it was simply listed as a horticulturalist proverb. It’s just as well as it allows me to have a vision of some kind of robed and bearded gardening god emerging from the clouds seeking vengeance, with a rose in one hand and a hoe in the other.

Tomorrow my favorite might be, Humanism doesn’t bore me; it even appeals to me. But I find it inadequate. Come again? What can be inadequate about having a spirit of helpfulness and empathy for your fellow man? Was this written by some budding misanthrope? No, the author was the French writer and philosopher Albert Camus. Why did he think humanism deficient? I think I know. It could be a five letter word that starts with s and is the mental component he felt was needed for one to be superior to a cold and uncaring universe. You’ll come across the word in one of his other quotes within; but maybe you’ve got a better idea.

Or maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow needing a bit of humor to cheer me up. In that case maybe my favorite will be Jon Cryer’s funny story involving his first wardrobe fitting for his character Duckie in Pretty in Pink (1986 movie). I don’t think I ever saw the film so I can’t say how it rates artistically, but Cryer’s brief recounting is a carefully worded gem.

Some say a collection of quotes says more about the collector than it does about the ideas expressed. I hope this is not true. But if it is, welcome to my world. What follows are comments about a diverse range of subjects: From Banksy to rocketry, from camping to nagging, from octopuses to semicolons, from the Denisova Cave to dark matter. Together they shed light on the human experience—who we are, the concerns and uncertainties we wrestle with, and some of what just intrigues or amuses us.

A quarter of the quotes relate to movies and moviemaking. Why include movies in a book of quotations? Because they are a large part of our shared culture, and filmmaking is the dominant art form of our age and attracts many of our most perceptive and brightest wordsmiths. These writers have said a lot about the human condition. A good film can, in the words of Jimmy Stewart, give people little tiny pieces of time—pieces of time that they never forget. A great film like The Grapes of Wrath (1940) or The Godfather (1972) can give us a common bond and act as a uniting reference point for generations. Also, a book of quotations can be a bit ponderous. Movie dialogue and observations about moviemaking can add an element of freshness, provide a nice juxtaposition with the more serious quotes from literature and philosophy, and give insight into our most magical and complex medium of artistic expression.

I encountered these quotations over several decades and thought them special enough to carefully write down and save. They were made by those famous and those not; written or spoken during recent times or earlier ones; and culled from books, newspapers, magazines, films, TV shows, and radio programs. Most could be called obscure as they won’t be familiar (in fact, quote familiarity was a negative selection criteria) and cannot be found in other quotation books or web sites. The shortest is just two words and should make you smile. Others are a couple of paragraphs and more serious. One of the longest, at two pages, is an umpire describing the aftermath of a safe call he made at first base. For me they are all enlightening, witty, or thought provoking—brief masterpieces of human reflection.

Most quotes list their creator. The NOTES section in the back documents where the quotes appeared, permitting the reader to possibly obtain additional contextual information and some reassurance that the listed author did write or say the words ascribed.

Movie dialogue quotes, however, present a problem in assigning authorship. A movie frequently has more than one writer and it is conceivable that even somebody without a writing credit contributed lines or phrasing. Consequently, I identify the actors and movie tied to a dialogue quote rather than the author. This may help the reader visualize delivery of the lines and perhaps even relive the scene. I identify the credited writers of the film in the NOTES.

Every compiler of quotations faces the decision of how to group and order them. I have chosen to group them loosely by general topic, and ordered them within each topic to aid continuity and flow. The TABLE OF CONTENTS lists the 111 topics. While it is like a subject index, it is less precise and a bit more whimsical: less precise because quotes can be listed under only one of the limited and sometimes vague general topics; more whimsical because some quotes are grouped with another based on only a tangential commonality in order to provide some contrast and surprise. A particularly egregious example might clarify this.

One of the topics is Hamlet. It consists of two quotes, one by Richard Burton and the other by the director Billy Wilder. The gracious and reverent Burton quote is about the degree of success he and other actors had playing the role. It is solidly a quote about Hamlet. The Wilder citation, however, is solidly about his reaction to the 1946 movie The Best Years of Our Lives. Only at the end of it does he make an off-the-cuff remark about Hamlet. For me, the dichotomy of their views on Shakespeare’s play made this pairing desirable.

The SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX in the back is a more detailed and traditional listing of subjects. It permits a quote to be listed under multiple and customized subjects as necessary, affording another way into the collection. If you are interested in finding all the quotes on a subject, say baseball (even though it’s listed as a topic in the TABLE OF CONTENTS) or the 1979 movie Breaking Away, use the back index.

This book has several purposes. While it primarily aims to entertain and inform, I hope it also provides a sense of how perceptive notables from earlier generations were. People like Confucius (551–479 BC), Seneca (4 BC?–AD 65), Boethius (AD 480?–524), La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), and Santayana (1863–1952) were spot on in describing important aspects of the human condition, and doing it elegantly and simply. They should be more commonly known than they are. Or to put it in less flattering terms for us the living, we are not as original and unique in our thoughts as we think.

Finally, the book is meant as a tribute to all the authors within. They are the sharp, sensitive, and clever people whose ideas and humor have enriched my life. I trust they will enrich yours.

Back to TOC

...a man’s life consists largely of his ideas…

~ Clarence Darrow

1. ABOUT FAMOUS PEOPLE

1

…[he] looks like a slightly seedy Eagle Scout who is always being stalked by a battalion of slightly aggressive field mice.

~ Rex Reed describing Jack Nicholson, People Are Crazy Here

2

He’s such a sleaze… He’s like the only guy in the eighth grade who knew about sex.

~ Anonymous source describing the actor James Woods

3

There’s no comfort in the words of Samuel Beckett, only the satisfaction of having heard the worst.

~ Dan Sullivan, theater critic

4

Downs, who did commercials for Ford, always seems like a guy who is trying to sell you a Pinto.

~ Frank Swertlow on Hugh Downs

5

I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin.

~ Oscar Levant, actor/pianist/wit

[Note: Levant was in Day’s first film Romance on the High Seas (1948) where she played a nightclub singer. Her role was distinctly different from the innocent character she portrayed in subsequent films and for which she became famous.]

6

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

~ Francis Ford Coppola, writer/director (The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, Apocalypse Now, Peggy Sue Got Married)

7

Francis [Ford Coppola] may give the appearance of being a bumbler, a romantic mess, but he’s in control. He has no secret. He’s just a guy who makes more and better choices than anybody [else].

~ Robert Towne, screenwriter (Chinatown)

[Note: Towne contributed crucial scenes to The Godfather.]

8

Discussing values with her—what a joy! What a privilege.

~ Mark Rydell describing Katharine Hepburn on the film he directed, On Golden Pond (1981)

9

A trip into nature with him was a delight. On a float trip, there were certain rituals. First, the best rock thrower had to be established. Then, the best rock skipper. That done, the trip could proceed…

~ Jules Loh describing the painter Thomas Hart Benton

10

An environmental cause of the asymmetrical development of the right and left bones of his face and the subnormal neuromuscular tonus of the left side, and hyperphoria of the left eye, his melancholy disposition and euphoric compensation followed after the accidental fracture of his skull and probable injury of his brain in childhood.

When an adult, his hair was coarse and black, and his eyes were small, grey and deeply set. His ears were large, thick-lobed, and extended out at almost right angles to his head. His usually long and generally disheveled hair hid this grotesque, comical inferiority. His nose was not relatively oversized, but it looked large because of his thin face. The nostrils did not extend as far into the tip of the nose as in most people, which made the end look heavy. He was said, when young, to have been somewhat sensitive about his nose, but not about his ears.

~ Edward J. Kempf (edited), psychiatrist, describing Abraham Lincoln

11

[Ulysses S.] Grant was not bitter toward those who had succeeded where he had failed; they had simply pulled themselves out onto different safe rocks. Theirs were department stores; his was Vicksburg.

~ William S. McFeely, Grant

12

He has an appetite for friendship.

~ Thomas Caplan (novelist) describing Bill Clinton, his friend since their freshman year together at Georgetown University

13

Trump… [is] creating widespread alienation and fear among Americans. Trump [is] normalizing behavior that therapists fight to reverse, including the tendency to blame others in our lives for our personal fears and insecurities… [and] a kind of hyper-masculinity that is antithetical to the examined life and healthy relationships.

~ Therapist and professor William Doherty, as reported and quoted by Soumya Karlamangla

14

I’m no alcoholic. I’m a drunkard. There’s a difference. A drunkard doesn’t like to go to meetings.

~ Jackie Gleason

15

You never knew whether Jim would show up as the erudite, poetic scholar or the kamikaze drunk.

~ Paul Rothchild, record producer for The Doors, on Jim Morrison

16

I became Elton John success, and then it became Elton John excess.

~ Elton John

17

…This was a hard woman who had imposed her 192 square feet of clouds on Chicago.

~ Joan Didion describing Georgia O’Keeffe and her painting Sky Above Clouds

18

You are an acceptable level of threat and if you were not you would know about it.

~ Banksy (graffiti stencil artist) on Banksy

19

The beard is a good reminder to me that [hosting late night television] was a different life… My family has given up on the beard. My son thinks it’s creepy… I just got tired of shaving every day, but then it became something else, and I’m not quite sure what it became.

~ David Letterman, about his prodigious beard

20

…[Stephen] Colbert inhales oxygen and exhales funny.

~ Larry Wilmore, comedian

21

I had been a silent child and I… entered a silent profession…

~ Twyla Tharp, dancer/choreographer, Push Comes to Shove

22

I train people, and rehabilitate dogs.

~ César Millán, dog trainer and TV personality

23

Elon [Musk] is not an ass, and yet sometimes he will say things that are very assholey. He just doesn’t think about the personal impact of what he’s saying. He just wants to fulfill the mission. Part of my job is to tend to the wounded.

~ Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX

24

To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars and I’m