Top 100 Movies Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best movies quotes ever written, picked out of the full movies archive on QuoteForever. You will find Quentin Tarantino, Finn Wolfhard, Samuel Goldwyn and Spike Lee among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

2

I don't want to criticize any other designers, but I have to say that many of the people involved in this industry - directors and producers - are trying to make their games more like movies. They are longing to make movies rather than making videogames.

3

Give me a couple of years, and I'll make that actress an overnight success.

4

All my good movies, nobody sees.

5

I've found that if you wear a beret, people think you're either a cabdriver or a producer of dirty movies.

6

I'm not a huge fan of scary movies, but I love doing them because your character arc gets condensed, and everything is elevated, and so you kind of have this amazing opportunity to go in many different places.

7

I don't worry about great visuals that they showed that weren't actually running on real hardware. It doesn't matter. Gamers don't make their purchase decisions based on movies that were shown in May for products that come out in March.

8

Awards were made in Hollywood, in whatever the time it was created. They're to promote each other's movies. You give me an award, I give you an award and people will believe that we are great movies and they'll go to see them. It's still the same.

9

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

10

Editing is where movies are made or broken. Many a film has been saved and many a film has been ruined in the editing room.

11

I believe in my privacy. I always have, and I always will. I don't think that my private life needs to be on display for me to get a better response at the box office or for me to get a better choice of movies.

12

I love horror, I love scary movies, I love thrillers. If things creep you out and spook you? I love it.

13

Right now I just want to chill for a while. Take a hiatus from all the craziness. To clean my house, see my family. Just see some movies and pick some strawberries.

14

I only make movies to finance my fishing.

15

For me, horror movies are a real escape.

16

I just want to sing, I want to work on my music, I want to make my movies, that's all I want to do.

17

Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that.

18

People need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.

19

God didn't make me to make movies, flex muscles, buy gold. What you love the most becomes your God... If I never make another dollar, my life is complete.

20

I'm an enormous admirer of Christopher Lee. He's somebody, along with Vincent Price, who I celebrate, and I wanted my movies to show that celebration and that honoring of these great film stars that were unafraid to go into horror and Grand Guignol and the macabre.

21

I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies... Egotism and laziness. And they're all lit like television shows.

22

I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I'll make pretty good movies the rest of my life.

23

There's more to life than movies.

24

Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.

25

I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion.

26

The best reason to go to the movies is to be with other people. Eating the popcorn, being with other people you don't know.

27

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'

28

If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one.

29

Why movies are so powerful is because you are right in there and you stay in there until they want you to come out, and then you've really gone somewhere.

30

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.

31

I was very influenced by movies; I was very influenced by a world that had a sense of dream.

32

I think the success of a film is very important to an actor. It depends on how many people go to watch your movies; the more the merrier. Nobody wants to do a film for five people. You work so hard that millions of people watch the movie; this is directly related to box office success.

33

There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.

34

Movies are hard work. The public doesn't see that. The critics don't see it. But they're a lot of work. A lot of work.

35

In the next couple of years, part of every film's process is going to be to adjust the images. And it'll be to change the color of an actor's tie or change the little smirky thing he's doing with his mouth. Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little bit.

36

I make about two movies a year outside the 'True Blood' schedule. I work on a great show six months a year, then outside that I get to satisfy whatever creative urges I have. It's a great position, especially for a single guy like me.

37

Go see it and see for yourself why you shouldn't go see it.

38

Not everybody goes to movies to get their life changed.

39

I'm fed up with the idiots... the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who green-light the movies.

40

I'm a weird big guy. Doing rapping, doing movies. Do a lot of stuff. But always do things the right way.

41

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

42

A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn't intend to be there.

43

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

44

Cell phones tend to bring us more inside of our lives whereas movies offer a chance to escape, so there are two competing forces.

45

Well, the wonderful thing about making movies, oddly enough, is that they're sort of highly motivated graduate studies in one or another field.

46

I never really got nightmares from movies. In fact, I recall my father saying when I was three years old that I would be scared, but I never was.

47

In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.

48

I've made over 20 movies, and 5 of them are good.

49

I've made 122 movies, and I daresay there's a picture of mine showing somewhere in the world every day.

50

To be an artist, you don't have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It's just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.

51

It's the story that counts.

52

I made over forty Westerns. I used to lie awake nights trying to think up new ways of getting on and off a horse.

53

I love the irony of movies. I really do. For whatever reason, I'm incredibly intrigued by the irony of reality in a motion picture.

54

Sometimes over things that I did, movies that didn't turn out very well - you go, 'Why did you do that?' But in the end, I can't regret them because I met amazing people. There was always something that was worth it.

55

I've had an amazing life, but I think I was born with a little bit of sadness in me. I've always been attracted to those things, whether it's sad movies, sad music... when you're sad, you feel everything in a greater way than you do when you're happy.

56

I mean, the whole idea of movies was it was special to go to see - you went to a movie theater to see something that was magical and amazing, in a very special location.

57

Horror movies are the best date movies. There's no wondering, 'When do I put my arm around her?'

58

I'm carded for R-rated movies. And I get talked down to a lot. When I try to go rent a car or buy an airplane ticket or other stuff adults do, I get 'Okaaaaaay, honey.' I remember when I was 18, getting crayons in a restaurant.

59

Christmas for me is all about spending time with my family. I cherish any chance we have to spend all day together making gingerbread houses, baking cookies, or sitting around and watching movies.

60

With any of the movies I've had a chance to do, or any of the TV shows I've had a chance to contribute to, people approach me and say, 'Hey, would you like to do this?' I laugh out loud and say, 'Yes, that'd be funny.' Or, I'm very moved by what I read and say, 'Yes. How can I help you?'

61

Computers were never designed in the first place to become musical instruments. Within a computer, everything is sterile - there's no sound, there's no air. It's totally code. Like with computer-generated effects in movies, you can create wonders. But it's really hard to create emotion.

62

I was lucky enough to have an older brother who shared the splatter flicks with me, and I had parents who were cool and involved enough in my life to allow me to see them. I think my folks appreciated that I looked at these movies as a creative outlet... almost like magic shows, if you will.

63

It was cool when the Duffers assigned a list of movies to watch.

64

My dad, who is a screenwriter, showed me all these great movies. He showed me 'E.T.' when I was 2-years-old, and I just kind of progressed from there. It was also my brother. We'd always watch movies together, and he'd do these voices and he'd always want to do skits and he'd come up with stuff with me.

65

My dad is a screenwriter, so he always used to watch movies for inspiration when I was a baby. I would watch movies with him, I guess, in the background.

66

After you've watched your dad beat the crap out of Charlie King or some other bad guy in about forty movies, you pretty much always said, 'Yes, sir,' and meant it.

67

Staring down the barrel of a gun is the scariest thing you could ever experience. It's not funny. It's not for the movies.

68

Hollywood, we get it. The Christian faith just doesn't work for you 'in the long run.' However, for a large percentage of this country (the same country that makes your movies millions of dollars), it does. So please, for all of our sakes, keep your 'beliefs to yourself' and just 'stop the hate.'

69

I used to send away for eight-minute Super 8 movies of various Ray Harryhausen scenes advertised on the back of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' magazine.

70

When I was in high school, there was 'Superbad' and 'The Girl Next Door' and 'Wedding Crashers' and all these great movies. You hope to be a part of something that's smart, funny and in that Todd Phillips-vein. You want to make something like 'Superbad.' That movie was so good and so funny.

71

Brad Pitt's role in 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' - I want to do that so bad! That's one of my favorite movies of all time, and that character was so funny.

72

When I was in 'Billy,' I always knew that I wanted to do something in performing. I always knew that I wanted to have a future in the performing arts. I had no idea that it was going to be acting in movies.

73

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.

74

So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it's one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point.

75

I think you kind of hope for people to gush over movies, but I think the opposite way is great sometimes, too. I'd rather have a movie that you're angry about and that you're talking about the next day, than something you forget about when the popcorn goes into the trash.

76

I don't want to dress up a picture with just my face.

77

I don't storyboard. I guess it dates back to my days in live television, where there was no possibility of storyboarding and everything was shot right on the spot - on the air, as we say - at the moment we were transmitting. I prefer to be open to what the actors do, how they interact to the given situation.

78

'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' is one of the greatest films of all time.

79

Movies are an art form that is very available to the masses.

80

One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.

81

People know that I have a great love for cinema. Not just for commercial cinema, but for the 'cinema d'auteur.' But to me, two of the great 'auteurs' are actually actors and they both happen to be French. One is Alain Delon and the other is Jean-Paul Belmondo.

82

That was the moment I wanted to use bitcoin: when I saw Harriet Tubman on a $20 bill. It's like, when you see all the slave movies, it's like, why you gotta keep reminding us about slavery? Why don't you put Michael Jordan on a $20 bill?

83

I did a few movies, but the word 'star'... I cannot compare to a star like Clint Eastwood. I used to call Clint 'Larry Dickman' when he would come to my show; then, he started using the name when he would go under cover in a 'Dirty Harry' movie. That's why he's a movie star... he's so creative.

84

I like movies, because it's kind of a combination of every art, it's like it's picture, it's story, it's music, it's kind of like a clash and a collide of every art. It's really neat.

85

We're in a world where masculinity, especially with these big spectacle movies, is often pushed by rippling six packs and forcing an image down someone's throat trying to prove masculinity. Whereas I think true masculinity comes from having a strong sense of self.

86

I feel like movies should stick to a genre and give the audience what they want, and then surprise them with the unexpected and not just do the same thing you've always seen. But of course, you're gonna see some of the same things you've seen before. It's part of the deal.

87

I like happy endings in movies. I think life has a happy ending. When it's all said and done, it's all something worthwhile, and I want my movies to reflect that. There are enough things to be sad about. When you pop in a movie, let the message be one that's one of hope.

88

I watch other wrestlers. I watch movies with Jackie Chan and Jet Li and Tony Jaa. Then there's breakdancing and Capoeira - just anything I see that looks awesome that I think I could adapt in the ring. Just your typical Kung Fu, breakdancing, Capoeira moves.

89

I guess I was a child actor. Acting was one of the things I did alongside going to school: I'd be playing guitar, I'd be playing soccer, and I would be acting in movies.

90

Whenever I have free time, I usually just sleep, play games, watch movies, see my friends, have a drink. Basically, I do whatever other people do in everyday life.

91

When I was a kid, I really loved watching 'Cinderella.' It's a fantasy, and every girl knows that real life isn't always like these movies, but as a child, I just really loved the story of 'Cinderella.' I found it to be so romantic and just a beautiful movie to watch.

92

Inspiration comes from everywhere. From life, observing people, etc. From movies and books you love. From research.

93

'Fast Times At Ridgemont High' is one of my favorite movies; it's a film that's a human comedy, it's a drama, and the characters all, in a way, fit the teenage archetypes, but they don't become stereotypes because each of the actors brought their own presence and their own personality to the screen.

94

Music is still part of my life, but I hate the idea of people coming to see me play the guitar because they've seen me in movies. You want people who are listening to be only interested in the music.

95

In cartoons, in movies, time passes differently. There are flashbacks and flashfowards.

96

The irony is that the more unapologetically sexist men are in movies, the more women tend to be attracted to them in person.

97

Maybe I was just born in the wrong era, man. I'm a bit of a throwback to the days of black and white movies. Those guys back then, they had a certain kind of directness about them. A lot of the screenplays, the plots were very simplistic - they gave rise to a type of anti-hero that maybe I suit better.

98

I just grew up watching a lot of movies. I'm attracted to this genre and that genre, this type of story, and that type of story. As I watch movies I make some version of it in my head that isn't quite what I'm seeing - taking the things I like and mixing them with stuff I've never seen before.

99

More and more, as I grow older, I find myself looking for inspiration in painting, illustration, videogames, and old movies.

100

I've known Ben Stiller for a minute. One of my first movies was 'Along Came Polly.'

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