John Schlesinger Quotes

#1. John Schlesinger had one of his friends designing it and he had never done a film before. Ten days before it started, they didn't have any costumes. I was rung up and joined up.

Julie Harris

#2. I built up a knowledge of 1960s and '70s British films because my dad used to work nights, and I'd sit up with my mum and watch films - 'How I Won the War' and the films of Richard Lester, Karel Reisz and John Schlesinger.

Nick Moran

#3. The lower a human being descends, the more asleep and inhumane he becomes. Those beings that lack Compassion, Love, and Peace are the true targets of the ego system ...

Jacqueline Ripstein

#4. We taped all this and then got it transcribed and picked the best lines or ideas or ways to take a scene. I've done that many times, and it can improve the script but also wreck a perfectly good scene.

John Schlesinger

#5. No, United Artists was a very extraordinary organization, because once they had agreed on the director, they believed in letting him have his way. They trusted me, and that doesn't often happen.

John Schlesinger

#6. Write him down, if he must write him down as something, as a disbeliever; he disbelieved in the Pope, in the Kremlin, in the Vietcong, in the American eagle, in astrology, Arthur Schlesinger, Eldridge Cleaver, Senator Eastland, and Eastman Kodak. Nor did he believe overmuch in his disbelief. He

John Updike

#7. I met a hustler at a dinner party. He had been invited because I was looking for an adviser to help me with the street scenes. So we put him on the film.

John Schlesinger

#8. Hollywood is an extraordinary kind of temporary place.

John Schlesinger

#9. Men's supply of passion, she knew from long experience, was easily depleted. Though they might threaten to move earth and heaven too, half an hour later their boasts would be damp sheets and resentment.

Clive Barker

#10. Making a film is like going down a mine-once you've started you bid a metaphoricalgoodbye to the daylight and the outside world for the duration.

John Schlesinger

#11. My rule on honorary degrees has always been to have one more than Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

John Kenneth Galbraith

#12. But I bet more than half the people in the world right now are worrying about something that really is going to be okay.

Catherine Ryan Hyde

#13. I've never felt that using something with tongue in cheek has been a bad thing.

John Schlesinger

#14. Symbolism perhaps is a bit in your face, and I've tried my best to control that as best I can as I've grown older and thought that one could approach something with a little more subtlety.

John Schlesinger

#15. Yes, but I think if you look at it with a sort of gay sensibility and want everything to be positive about gay life, it could be interpreted as antigay.

John Schlesinger

#16. Oh, the relationship with actors and managers and agents and things is a terrible problem sometimes.

John Schlesinger

#17. Standards wars involve lots of variables, and understanding them often seems more an art than a science. They generally involve just two big players, and end in a winner-take-all situation.

James Surowiecki

#18. Tell everyone to vote: Tom Savini for Governor on 'The Walking Dead'!

Tom Savini

#19. I'm an idealist without illusions.
[Ca. 1953, attributed to John F. Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in 'A Thousand Days'

John F. Kennedy

#20. I thought his performance was absolutely wonderful and had said so, but he seemed, as actors quite often are when they first see something, to be disappointed. I think he expected more from the film and himself.

John Schlesinger

#21. I'll never forget the first screening at the Berlin Film Festival. As soon as the film ended there was an outbreak of booing, which made us look at each other with some surprise.

John Schlesinger

#22. There was some arking and barking at dinner...

Stephen King

#23. I have a feeling he felt Jon Voight had run away with the film, which he didn't, though he was brilliant in it, in a much less easy part. I just don't know what had got into him, but something had.

John Schlesinger

#24. There are certain actors who are very good at improvising, like Dustin Hoffman and Glenda Jackson.

John Schlesinger

#25. Micheal Barrow and Darrin Smith, those guys were really intelligent. They're smart football players. They'd always be a step ahead of the offense and could predict what was coming. Dan Morgan has that. Jonathan Vilma has that. Ray Lewis has that.

Larry Coker

#26. Still, the film nearly didn't happen a number of times. There were great arguments with United Artists about how to reduce the cost because they were nothing if not conscious of the price of the film.

John Schlesinger

#27. That attitude toward women as objects may have worked for the late Sixties, but it doesn't do so now.

John Schlesinger

#28. How embarrassing would that be to be found dead, naked in your bathroom, in a pile of Honey Dust?

Deanna Chase