Most movies are not very good. Most people know it and like to see them anyway.

Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care at all resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in literature.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.

Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.