Sidney Lumet (Sidney Arthur Lumet) Quotes
In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.
Quotes to Explore
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Everyone thinks I land in a chopper on top of my building and I have the most cushy existence. Could you understand that I might have the most messed up life myself?
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I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.
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Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
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Life is like the ocean, it goes up and down.
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I like to razz the Trekkies a little bit. Who doesn't? It's trainspotting, isn't it? But they are very well-meaning, actually. I've done a couple of Star Trek conventions, and they've only been really welcoming.
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The gravest risks from al Qaeda combine its affinity for big targets and its announced desire for weapons of mass destruction.
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My work on human capital began with an effort to calculate both private and social rates of return to men, women, blacks, and other groups from investments in different levels of education.
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It's hard to say conversation has become a minimal thing, because look at the rise of mobile communications in the last 10 years. It used to be only the president had a mobile phone. Now everyone on earth, even if they have nothing else, they have a cell phone.
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To expect for me to be one-way every time you see me is to expect me to be a one-dimensional man, which I've never been. I've always applauded my efforts to be diverse and multi-faceted.
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It's not what you wear it's how you wear it, is what I say.
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Let us together create the new building of the future, which will be everything in one form: architecture and sculpture and painting.
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If there was a payment to the bank due, and we needed shoes, she'd get the shoes, and then deal with them guys at the bank. I don't mean she wouldn't pay the bank, but the children always came first.
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We've carried that over into the visual development as well. We've designed quite an exotic cast of characters, but the last thing we want is to dictate to the players how their PCs should look. What we want to do is inspire.
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Affairs that depend on many rarely succeed.
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It's not really that I'm interested in filmmaking. I'm interested in the instrument of it, you know.
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Anything that I can do with my voice that's good, I'll try to do.
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Attempts to tame the wayward and domesticate the riotous, to make the unknowable predictable and enchain the free-roaming - all such things sound the death knell to love.
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When an actor decides to play a character, he must exude some sort of charisma and look relatable, even if he is playing the role of a really unattractive person.
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In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.
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The hardest thing in the world to do is to have someone in a seat in a theater laughing so hard that they're making weird sounds.
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I came up in a family oriented towards the sick, so I always felt an obligation for doing something.
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Our foreign policy needs to support our energy, economic, defense and domestic policies. It all falls within the arch of national interest. There will be windows of opportunity, but they will open and close quickly.
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In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.
