Quotes from Roger Ebert

To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

It is universally agreed that Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining.

Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius.

A truly strong woman will choose a stong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along.

We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too.

If Hollywood stars speak out, so do all sorts of other people. Now Hollywood stars can get a better hearing.

The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned out by the noise.

' 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.

What a terrible thing it would be to be the Pope! What unthinkable responsibilities to fall on your shoulders at an advanced age! No privacy. No seclusion. No sin.

I am utterly bored by celebrity interviews. Most celebrities are devoid of interest.

It often strikes me that the actors in high school movies look too old.

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject - unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater.

Are vampires kinky? I didn't know.

Nothing ever seems straightforward in Venice, least of all its romances.

I've never found kicks to the groin particularly funny, although recent work in the genre of the buddy movie suggests audience research must prove me wrong.

Because I don't give the studios advanced quotes or an advanced look at my reviews. I think the readers deserve to read my reviews before the studios do.

If there's anything I hate more than a stupid action comedy, it's an incompetent stupid action comedy. It's not so bad it's good. It's so bad it's nothing else but bad.

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

So much of what happens by chance forms what becomes your life.

It amazes me that filmmakers will still film, and audiences will still watch, relationships so bankrupt of human feeling that the characters could be reading dialogue written by a computer.

Many really good films allow us to empathize with other lives.

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

From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama.

I don't require movies to be about good people, and I don't reject screen violence.