Quotes from Roger Ebert

you are never warmer than when you have been cold.

As we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do, after all, amount to more than a hill of beans.

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation. . . . Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Don't waste time on how it starts until you know how it ends

And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.

That's how I gained a lifelong fondness for repeating certain phrases beyond the point of all reason.

There must be something deep within our memory as a species that is pleased by being able to look at what is making us warm.

I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. 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.

I have been here before, I am here now, I will be here again.

In my reviews, I feel it's good to make it clear that I'm not proposing objective truth, but subjective reactions; a review should reflect the immediate experience.

Orson Welles] was a man who made the greatest film ever made and was never forgiven for it.

They give you a smaller glass so it feels like you're getting more

In our lives, we surf the wave of chance.

When a movie character is really working, we become that character. That's what the movies offer: escapism into lives other than our own.

You can't say it wasn't interesting.

When, in a free society, the press is criticized for negativity, that almost always means it has dared to question the policies of the party in power. 'Patriotism,' Samuel Johnson said, 'is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' He could have been speaking of those who use it to shield themselves from dissent.

The ability of an audience to enter into the narrative arc of a movie is being lost; do today's audiences have the patience to wait for Harry Lime in The Third Man?

So much of what happens by chance forms what becomes of your life….I suppose I must be grateful, for I seem to have been headed this way all along.

Drama holds a mirror up to life, but needn't reproduce it.

Perhaps it is the nature of man not to wish to know too much about his own nature.

Pauline Kael] had no theory, no rules, no guidelines, no objective standards. You couldn't apply her 'approach' to a film. With her it was all personal.

The story is recycled out of a 1983 French film named Les Comperes, as part of a trend in which Hollywood buys French comedies and experiments on them to see if they can be made in English with all of the humor taken out.

To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.