Quotessence
Home / Authors / Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert Quotes

Film critic

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleFilmThinkingIfsKnowsWayWorldHumansShouldFirsts

Famous Roger Ebert Quotes

“In these days of high-tech video games, it's remarkable that kids once got incredibly thrilled while pushing little metal racing cars around a cardboard track: The toy car was yours, and you invested it with importance and enhanced it with fantasy and pitied it because it was small, like you were. Such games were weapons against the ennui of endless Saturdays.”

LittlesKidsGamesFantasyCarLike YouWeaponsImportanceTrackEndlessVideoThese DaysRemarkablePushingRacingMetalsHuman ConditionToysSaturdayRace CarEnnui
Book:Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007
Create image

“It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His editor cabled back: Forget flood. Interview God.”

StoriesShowsBigsKidsTodayYoungForgetMissingHumourDestructionPressesNosesSatInterviewsCoveredEditorsLegendsFloodReportersJournalisticOverlooking
Book:Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007
Create image

“Steve Coogan picks up enough to lecture an interviewer: This is a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post about. Later it's claimed that Tristram Shandy was No. 8 on the Observer's list of the greatest novels, which cheers everyone until they discover the list was chronological.”

BookEnoughLanguageNovelPicksListsPostsCheerObserversLecturesModernismPostmodernInterviewers
Book:Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007
Create image

“My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may - need is the word I use - to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.”

KnowsWorldNeedsMayBookWarUseNovelSubjectsHavensOne DayTablesDiscussionWar Of The WorldsChairsPossessedShelvesSecond World WarSagaFinnegans Wake
Author:Roger Ebert
Create image

“One of the most sublime and hazardous moments in human experience comes when two people lock eyes and realize that they are sexually attracted to one another. They may not act on the knowledge.They may file it away for future reference. They may deny it. They may never see each other again. But the moment has happened, and for an instant all other considerations are insignificant.”

PeopleHumansMayTwoMomentsEyeRealizingHappenedDenyInstantConsiderationLocksSublimeInsignificantHuman ExperienceFilesSexually
Book:Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007
Create image

“What we have here is a rousing boy's adventure story, adapted from stories that Edgar Rice Burroughs cranked out for early pulp magazines. They lacked the visceral appeal of his Tarzan stories, which inspired an estimated 89 movies; amazingly, this is the first John Carter movie, but it is intended to foster a franchise and will probably succeed.”

FirstsStoriesBoysAdventureSucceedInspiredMagazinesAppealsRiceCarterAdaptedVisceralPulpBurroughs
Author:Roger Ebert
Create image

“When I go to a great movie, I can live somebody else's life a little bit for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief.”

FeelsLittlesI CanDifferentBeliefBitsWalksRaceClassEconomicMembersLittle BitShoesGenderDifferent TimesDifferent RacesDifferent BeliefsEconomic Class
Author:Roger Ebert
Create image

“While I am usually in despair when a movie abandons its plot for a third act given over entirely to action, I have no problem with the way Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ends, because it has been pointing toward this ending, hinting about it, preparing us for it, all the way through. What a glorious movie.”

WayHas BeensEndsProblemActionGivenSecretDespairThirdsGloriousPlotAbandonHarry PotterPreparingNo ProblemPointingChamberPotters
Book:Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005
Create image

“Here is a children's film made for the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy. A film with no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults. No fighting between the two kids. No scary monsters. No darkness before the dawn. A world that is benign. A world where if you meet a strange towering creature in the forest, you curl up on its tummy and have a nap.”

IfsWorldShouldChildrenMadeTwoKidsFilmFightingEvilDarknessStrangeSceneCreaturesAdultsScaryMonstersForestsDawnVillainNapsCurlsBenignDarkness Before The Dawn
Author:Roger Ebert
Create image