Quotes from Roger Ebert

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its "self-help" section: "For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history, and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

Short Life Syndrome. Night watchmen in horror movies have a life expectancy of twelve seconds. SAM WAAs, Houston

Of that one, I wrote: "Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time.

Siskel's Saw. It's amazing how many movies are not as interesting as a documentary of the same actors sitting around talking over lunch. GENE SISKEL

One of my delights in these books, on the other hand, has been to include movies not often cited as "great"—some because they are dismissed as merely popular (Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark), some because they are frankly entertainments (Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Rififi), some because they are too obscure (The Fall of the House of Usher, Stroszek). We go to different movies for different reasons, and greatness comes in many forms.

Most courtroom movies feel it necessary to end with a clear-cut verdict. But 12 Angry Men never states whether the defendant is innocent or guilty. It is about whether the jury has a reasonable doubt about his guilt.

In literature, it's called plagiarism. In the movies, it's homage.

A work is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about what it is about.

The other Bonds were not wrong in the role (even Lazenby has his defenders), but they were not Connery, and that was their cross to bear.

The movies that last, the ones we return to, don't always have lofty themes or Byzantine complexities. Sometimes they last because they are arrows straight to the heart.

Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other 'isms' grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity.

The sad thing is that when movies like this fail, executives think that proves there's no audience for unusual, original pictures - because they think they've made one.

I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am more content with questions than answers.

Their costumes look purchased from the Goodwill store on Tatoine.

Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive.

You know a movie is slow when you start looking to see what time it is. You know it's awful when you start shaking your watch to see if it has stopped. One

Siskel's classic question, "Is this movie better than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?

Strange that movies about Satan always require Catholics. You never see your Presbyterians or Episcopalians hurling down demons.

A man goes to the movies. The critic must admit that he is this man.

Fate is not merely knocking on the door, it has entered with a SWAT team and is banging their heads together and administering poppers.

It is commonplace to say that silent films are more "dreamlike," but what does that mean? In Nosferatu, it means that the characters are confronted with alarming images and denied the freedom to talk them away. There is no repartee in nightmares. Human speech dissipates the shadows and makes a room seem normal. Those things that live only at night do not need to talk, for their victims are asleep, waiting.

because an American can have a double-barreled last name but there is little practice for a triple-barreled one.

Anyone who has the price of a newspaper should have a fair chance of understanding most of what's written in it

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear