Quotes from Stephen Hunter

maybe some of them black fellows can help you with the stretcher, and head

the nonconformism of complete conformism:

Chanters, second-edition sellers, boardwalkers, strawers, mountebanks, clowns, jugglers, conjurors, grease removers, nostrum vendors, fortune-tellers, French polishers, turnpike sailors, various classes of lurkers and peepers, stenographic-card sellers, racetrack-card sellers.

Some men are born to destroy, and nothing satisfies them but that. Whatever you've got, they want to tear it apart, from architecture and bank vaults to order and society itself, anything, just to watch it twist, shred, and die. Then

If you did 'Nam, brother, no payment at all. You already paid up in full." —

Someday I will teach you how to plan and administer an attack on a fortification. You don't just drive up to it, you idiot. What did you think would happen?

He was the sort of man who demanded results yesterday but then forgot to ask for them tomorrow.

Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.

As I say, after action, you are so gone no one will ever know you existed.

he was a man of politics and a man of action.

The art of the pitch was to keep it clear, quick, with a good sense of suspense toward a climax, leading to a single conclusion. It had to be a story, in other words.

You lie well, and I appreciate the effort it takes. It's not so easy, as any commissar knows.

Ich hasse Schlangen«, sagte Russ. »Verdammt, Junge«, versetzte Sam, »das sind doch bloß Eidechsen ohne Beine.«

Gut fand er, dass die Post gekommen war. Weniger gut fand er, dass sie aus dem Jahr 1957 stammte.

There are always consequences. Nothing occurs without consequences. You must face consequences.

By my count, of the more than 600 English-language World War II movies made since 1940, only four have even acknowledged the humanity of the soldiers of Nippon. There may be a few I've missed, but not many.

Considered purely as effects-driven filmed drama, 'The Day After Tomorrow' checks in somewhere in the middle of one of Hollywood's most absurd and least lamented dead genres, the disaster pic of the '70s. It's a little better than 'Earthquake' but not as good as 'The Towering Inferno,' because it doesn't star Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.

As long as 'Pearl Harbor' stays in the past, it's perfect; when it wretchedly changes gears in the late going, it becomes the wrong kind of same old story: Hollywood stupidity and callowness, writ large across the sky.

The Japanese, despite the trade deficit and their ability to build fabulous automobiles, still think that a guy in a monster suit is all that is needed for a monster movie.

I'm not an expert or a trained ballistician. But it is a subject I've studied intently for 50 years, so I may know a thing or two. In my opinion, the JFK investigation was poorly handled.

The prospects for a coherent, hilarious and consistent American comedy seem to lessen every year, as the poor waterlogged, gassy corpse called 'Evan Almighty' proved when it floated ashore recently. So there's a temptation to think too highly of Robin Williams's uneven but occasionally funny 'License to Wed.'

Now, I am about to be nailed as the man who disliked 'Howl's Moving Castle.' Lord, give me strength! Also, IT, please disconnect the e-mail thing.

If you have only 95 minutes of material, make an only 95-minute movie. Amazing how often that's forgotten.

I never feel so utterly fraudulent as when I review a movie whose charms impress all in the world and I simply do not get it. The other variant is that I love something the world disdains. This has had severe career consequences: I am still famous - or notorious - in certain quarters where I am recalled as the man who liked 'Hudson Hawk.'