- The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.
- Touch a scientist and you touch a child.
- [on writing "Fahrenheit 451"] I wasn't trying to predict the future. I was trying to prevent it.
- I am one of those fortunate people who were born to be joyful writers discovered the fact early on.
- Sense of humor is everything. You can do anything in this world if you have a sense of humor. Many directors, producers, people haven't learned that -- that if you just salt people down a little and put a bit of butter on them and make them happy, then we can all work together.
- There are two races of people - men and women - no matter what what women's libbers would have you pretend. Men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that.
- Once you hear a metaphor of mine, you won't forget it. A dinosaur falling in love with a lighthouse, boom, there's your metaphor. Once you hear that, you say, "Gee, I gotta read that, I wonder what happened?" All the great stories of the world are metaphorical, so they can be remembered. That's why so much stage writing and film writing today can't be remembered, because there are no metaphors. You can't tell the story when you come out of the theater. That's what's wrong with most modern fiction. Realism is what we already know. My job is to interpret realism, to turn it into metaphors, so you can swallow it.
- I'm the most cinematic writer around -- all of my short stories can be shot right off the page.
- I don't need to be vindicated, and I don't want attention. I never question. I never ask anyone else's opinion. They don't count.
- [on Ray Harryhausen] Long after we are all gone, his shadow shows will live through a thousand years in this world.
- [on Lon Chaney] He was someone who acted out our psyches. He got into the shadows inside our bodies. The history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited love.
- I have fun with ideas. I play with them. I'm not a serious person and I don't like serious people. I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring.
- I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously.
- I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
- Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
- After 9/11, Hollywood promised they were going to make more family films, less violence, and things of that sort, well it's never happened. Films have gotten more violent. The Bond films are unwatchable now; I was around 45 years ago when the Bond films began. They were nice quiet little films, every 5 minutes a little bit of action perhaps. But now there's an explosion every 5 minutes and they set off 10 billion gallons of gasoline, and there are more macho selves being made today, in which people settle things with guns, and with machine guns. So things have not improved. They've gotten worse.
- If you were to ask me what I think of Hollywood today, it's more of the same, except worse. I grew up in Hollywood, I roller skated around here, and got autographs and photographs when I was 14 years old, so I know the community very well. But things have gotten worse, because we're making more money today out of doing lousy films. A good example is The Mummy, it came out when I was 12 years old, I loved the film with Boris Karloff, a very minor film with a minor amount of money, probably cost $100,000 or less. But it's a beautiful film, with a nice script. They made a new version here at Universal 5 years ago, it was a terrible film. They thought "If one mummy's scares you, 2 dozen mummies, a chorus line of mummies has got to be very scary." So the film came out, dreadful film, and it made $500 million. So they were encouraged into believing that doing lousy films is profitable; but even worse than the old days. So they did another film called The Mummy Returns, and it was even worse than the first one, and it made a billion dollars, so they were encouraged in going ahead to making lousy films instead of quality films. So things haven't changed, they've just gotten bigger, and lousier.
- People say to me, "What is Hollywood's responsibility?". The responsibility of Hollywood is to prove that we are human. Not with happy endings, but with moments we take away and remember.
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