Best Film Noir Quotes

#1. I'm working on something that's not yet novel-shaped but is something of a film-noir-flavored 'Alice in Wonderland.' It will also very likely be a single volume story and not the start of a series.

Erin Morgenstern

#2. Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.

Paul Schrader

#3. Film noir has a mood that everyone can feel. It's people in trouble, at night, with a little bit of wind and the right kind of music. It's a beautiful thing.

David Lynch

#4. A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet.

Raymond Chandler

#5. No one knows I can do this," Ky says. "Now i have a secret of yours and you have one of mine.

Ally Condie

#6. There were some things that I found I really enjoyed singing about; like, on the title track, there's this film-noir character of a woman who's sort of losing it in a room.

Diana Krall

#7. He had a face right out of film noir, a face meant to be shot in black and white, parallel shadows of venetian blinds slashing across it, a plume of cigarette smoke spiraling beside it.

Khaled Hosseini

#8. [on Springsteen's "Stolen Car":] A kind of mystical film noir, written by Kafka and shot by Polanski.

Adam Sweeting

#9. The idea that the business world's needs get ignored in Washington is perpetuated by business so it can fulfill even more of its needs, real or imagined.

Timothy Noah

#10. She was a cute as a washtub.

Raymond Chandler

#11. There is something missing in a lot of digital filmmaking, something I call "poetic reality." That's something you see played out in film noir, where the technique establishes the mood.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#12. When we say 'cinematic', we tend to think John Ford and vistas and wide-open spaces. Or we think of kinetic camera movement or of a certain number of cinematic styles, like film noir.

Lenny Abrahamson

#13. Some of 'em [virtues] like extinct volcanoes,
with a strong memory or fire and brimstone.

Douglas William Jerrold

#14. Lochie. The boy I once loved. The boy I still love. The boy I will continue to love, even when my part in this world is over too.

Tabitha Suzuma

#15. Barbara Stanwyck, in particular, was peerless in everything from high and low comedy to drama to musicals to film noir. She never took a false step.

Eve Golden

#16. I think there are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.

Werner Herzog

#17. One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines.

Roger Ebert

#18. Bjork is a very original, interesting person. I like her very much.

Catherine Deneuve

#19. I admire hard-bitten, wisecracking realism of Ida Lupino and the film noir heroines. I'm sick of simpering white girls with their princess fantasies.

Camille Paglia

#20. I think the original Matrix was really incredible. It was so original and it did so many innovative things with film. It was a much bigger film. Bound was just a smaller film. It was kind of like an old noir film.

Gina Gershon

#21. Robert Pattinson has the face of a film-noir dupe. It's a face that is searching and open and kind. It's a face that a certain type of woman might want to fool because, in its intensely old-fashioned kindness, the face says, I love you. Fool me.

Wesley Morris

#22. Your character is slowly built and quickly eroded. You're definitely influenced whatever you are immersed in and whatever you're around and what you're a part of.

Mark Martin

#23. You and I are black and white - a film noir, filled with gestures, poignant and tender

John Geddes

#24. The final causes, then, of compassion are to prevent and to relieve misery.

Joseph Butler

#25. Either you're going to shoot us or you're not. The ball always lands on red or black, never both.

V. Alexander

#26. I think a film noir demands a beginning and an end.

Claire Denis

#27. I believe in loyalty. When a woman reaches an age she likes, she should stick with it.

Eva Gabor

#28. As a director, if you know what you want, then it's not scary.

Joseph Kosinski

#29. Billy Wilder is really is a heavy influence on Bound. We felt that film noir was a genre where you could create a really contained story. We wanted to be on a set as much as we could to get the kind of style level we were looking for.

Lana Wachowski

#30. That was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style.

Lawrence Kasdan

#31. The basis of persistence is the Power of Will.

Napoleon Hill

#32. I'm into clothes, but in a way that's related to wanting to walk into a film noir movie. You know, I love to go to vintage stores, but mostly it's stuff that I don't have anywhere to wear ... I don't have the life that goes with the clothes.

Maureen Dowd

#33. Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.

Petra Haden

#34. I'd love to play a femme fatale in a film noir. I'm thinking of one of those roles that Lauren Bacall or Bette Davis might have played. What I wouldn't like is to suddenly find myself being cast, as many senior actresses seem to be, as the abbess in a convent.

Diana Quick

#35. Is there something in druggy subjects that encourages directors to make imitation film noir? Film noir itself becomes an addiction.

Pauline Kael

#36. I study dead languages for a living," I said. "That's why you hired me. Why should I be up to speed on your line of work? How's your Serbo-Croatian? What's your position on the relationship between Oscan and Marrucinian?" He

Neal Stephenson

#37. With a genre like film noir, everyone has these assumptions and expectations. And once all of those things are in place, that's when you can really start to twist it about and mess around with it.

Lana Wachowski

#38. I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!

Marie Windsor

#39. Don't demean what I know is one of your favorite body parts.

Gil A. Waters