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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You can't be a first-world economy in the 21st century if you haven't laid the groundwork to seize the opportunities.
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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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The formula for achieving middle-class success is simple: Finish high school; don't have a child before the age of 20; and get married before having the child.
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We don't need bigger government. We need to shrink the size of government.
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I always tell people I went to the Harvard School of Comedy in front of America.
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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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I love auditioning. Since 'The Notebook' and 'Wedding Crashers,' I don't have to audition anymore, and I miss it. You get to show your interpretation of the character. I get nervous when I don't audition. What if they hate what I want to do?
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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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Isn't it said that eating pink noodles turns you into a horny pervert?!
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About Grade 9 and Grade 10, I had a fantastic drama teacher, and it was one of the first subjects I actually felt that I was good at. I wasn't a mathematician. Didn't like science, any of those subjects. English and Drama were the two subjects that I loved and felt that I was good at.
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I get very invested in characters, it's the only way I find that I can write a book and really make it work.
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America believes what's good for us is good for the world. It's very difficult to understand that that's not necessarily true.
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I was down in Washington when 9/11 happened. We were in the middle of putting together the next summer season, and all I could think of was something somehow must make sense to us. Our Town kept coming into my mind.
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In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.
