Sidney Lumet (Sidney Arthur Lumet) Quotes

In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.

Sidney Lumet

• Drama
• Story
• Characters
• Melodrama

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Quotes to Explore

• 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?

  

  Karan Johar
  • Life
  • Up
  • Myself

• You can't be a first-world economy in the 21st century if you haven't laid the groundwork to seize the opportunities.

  

  Wayne Swan
  • World
  • You
  • Economy

• I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.

  

  Sam Neill
  • Think
  • Authority
  • Brains

• 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.

  

  Larry Elder
  • School
  • High
  • Age

• We don't need bigger government. We need to shrink the size of government.

  

  Rand Paul
  • Government
  • Need
  • Size

• I always tell people I went to the Harvard School of Comedy in front of America.

  

  Vicki Lawrence
  • People
  • School
  • America

• 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.

  

  Wayne Dyer
  • Love
  • Care
  • Love Is

• Life is like the ocean, it goes up and down.

  

  Vanessa Paradis
  • Life
  • Up
  • Ocean

• 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.

  

  Malcolm McDowell
  • Done
  • Star
  • Couple

• The gravest risks from al Qaeda combine its affinity for big targets and its announced desire for weapons of mass destruction.

  

  Barton Gellman
  • Desire
  • Destruction
  • Risks

• 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.

  

  Gary Becker
  • Work
  • Men
  • Different

• 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.

  

  Padgett Powell
  • Earth
  • Conversation
  • Rise

• 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.

  

  T.I.
  • Time
  • Man
  • Way

• It's not what you wear it's how you wear it, is what I say.

  

  Rachel Stevens
  • You
  • Say
  • Wear

• 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?

  

  Rachel McAdams
  • Character
  • Hate
  • Nervous

• Let us together create the new building of the future, which will be everything in one form: architecture and sculpture and painting.

  

  Walter Gropius
  • Together
  • Future
  • Painting

• 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.

  

  Larry Bird
  • Children
  • She
  • Shoes

• A lot of times we work across multiple platforms. We'll go to Japan working on the tsunami for 'Nightly News' and it'll end up on 'Dateline.'

  

  Lester Holt
  • Up
  • Work

• To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.

  

  Eleonora Duse
  • People
  • Art
  • Drama

• We're not a vocational school. If someone wants to get a high-paying job, I would hope that there are easier ways to do it than working through a formal computer science curriculum.

  

  Philip Greenspun
  • School
  • Job
  • High

• The Tea Party emerged from a laudably grassroots base: libertarians, fervent Constitutionalists, and ordinary people alarmed at the suppression of liberties, whether by George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

  

  Naomi Wolf
  • People
  • Party
  • Tea

• Sexuality is a private matter; some believe that broadcasting it destroys the very things that make it sacred.

  

  Lance Loud
  • Believe
  • Matter
  • Sacred

• In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.

  

  Sidney Lumet
  • Drama
  • Story
  • Characters