"The Lucky One" is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Readers don't read his books because they're true, but because they ought to be true.

Movies that encourage empathy are more effective than those that objectify problems.

I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class.

We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls.

How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall, about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.

Well, you know what, I'm 60 years old, and I've been interested in politics since I was on my daddy's knee. During the 1948 election, we were praying for Truman. I know a lot about politics.

Fellini was more in love with breasts than Russ Meyer, more wracked with guilt than Ingmar Bergman, more of a flamboyant showman than Busby Berkeley... Amarcord seems almost to flow from the camera, as anecdotes will flow from one who has told them often and knows they work. This was the last of his films made for no better reason than Fellini wanted to make it.