Horton Foote Quotes

#1. My mother, twenty-two, was Harriet Gautier Brooks, named for her paternal grandmother, but always called Hallie. My father, twenty-six, was Albert Horton Foote, named for his father and great-grandfather, and I was named Albert Horton Foote, Jr.

Horton Foote

#2. You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore.

Robert Duvall

#3. Writing is the thing that props me up.

Horton Foote

#4. I've lived long enough to know things go in and out of fashion, and things not well received now can be totally reversed years later.

Horton Foote

#5. My first memory was of stories about the past - a past that, according to the storytellers, was superior in every way to the life then being lived. It didn't take me long, however, to understand that the present was all we had, for the past was gone, and nothing could be done about it.

Horton Foote

#6. I've redone plays of mine and made changes. A play is a living thing, and I'd never say I wouldn't rewrite years later. Tennessee Williams did that all the time, and it's distressing, because I'd like the play to be out there in its finished form.

Horton Foote

#7. In New York, there are a lot of plays to see, and I try to see as many as I can.

Horton Foote

#8. I come out of a strong oral tradition in the South,

Horton Foote

#9. When you're a writer, you have to write these stories, even if you don't get paid

Horton Foote

#10. A lot of writing is thinking.

Horton Foote

#11. Glance backward, look heavenward, reach outward, press onward

Thomas S. Monson

#12. 'Forbes' has championed entrepreneurism since its founding.

Michael Perlis

#13. If somebody wants a sheep, that is a proof that one exists.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#14. Anger is temporary insanity.

John S.C. Abbott

#15. Let the audience put 2 and 2 together so that it comes up with 4. Let them do that themselves, and they'll love you forever.

Vince Gilligan

#16. You have to watch out with my plays. They're like yeast. You think they're one thing, then all of a sudden subtext gets to working.

Horton Foote

#17. The person who goes astray from God's wise guidance burdens himself with sorrows and frustrations. In fact, he ends up being a slave to his own desires.

Vern Sheridan Poythress

#18. Early on, I said to myself that I would like to write a kind of moral and spiritual history of a place. It sounds a little pretentious, I know. But that's really what I set for myself.

Horton Foote

#19. I'm a social writer in the sense that I want to record, but not in the sense of trying to change people's minds.

Horton Foote

#20. You've got to know business before you go to show business.

Patti LaBelle

#21. All I know is what's past is past, and what's ahead is ahead. The second is ka, and takes care of itself.

Stephen King

#22. A writer has an inescapable voice. I think it's inherent in the nature, and I think that we don't control it anymore than we control what we want to write about.

Horton Foote

#23. I suffered from 'No one will ever fancy me!' syndrome, well into my teens. Even now I do not consider myself to be some kind of great, sexy beauty. Absolutely not.

Kate Winslet

#24. And deep within him, missing its accustomed tread, his heart paused, and gave one single stroke, as if on an anvil.

Dorothy Dunnett

#25. But I don't really write to honor the past. I write to investigate, to try to figure out what happened and why it happened, knowing I'll never really know. I think all the writers that I admire have this same desire, the desire to bring order out of chaos.

Horton Foote

#26. I was in the middle of a crossroads, which is a nice way of saying crisis, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You know the physical part. We just talked about it.

Star Jones

#27. I don't think I'll ever stop writing. I write almost every day. I'd write plays even if they were never done again. You're at the mercy of whatever talent you have.

Horton Foote

#28. I've known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them ... to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don't ask quarters.

Horton Foote

#29. If I ever teach writing again, I'd say the first lesson is to listen.

Horton Foote

#30. Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.

Bill Moyers

#31. I so earnestly believe that prayer can be helpful and guide you and protect you and inspire you. I mean, I'm in awe.

Horton Foote