Fourth Wall Quotes

I already killed you once... And I bet you'll come back again and again... No matter how many times I slaughter you. Your tendency to come back from the brink of death has nothing to do with your healing factor. Your mutant power isn't regeneration. It's popularity. ~ Cullen Bunn

Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall. ~ Stephen Sondheim

I'm just not made for that kind of live audience where you don't create a fourth wall. ~ Kristen Stewart

As TARDIS comes to rest, the only sound, its insistent hum, seems to fill the space entirely, and then this too is lost as the viewer is thrown outside, no longer a
participant, but forced into the detached role of observer: the police box now sitting at a tilt in a dark and barren alien landscape accompanied by the chilling audionaturalism of wind noise [...] In the silence of electronic sound, the audience ejection is experienced as sudden sensory deprivation, making the impression of das unheimliche
the dominant one. Again the fourth wall is breached, this time a figure cuts between us and the ship, carrying a spear rather than a torch, his shadow lengthening impossibly across the landscape towards TARDIS. When the end titles and signature start up, the eerie recognition threatens to become full blown horror as if the music,
having transported us here, is now leaving us to face an awakening of our repressed pasts. Next week, the titles inform us, THE CAVE OF SKULLS. ~ Dene October

I always felt like an outer-space alien. I was always breaking the fourth wall. ~ RuPaul

1 Pardon this highly unusual footnote, but I must break the Narrator's "fourth wall" to explain that this story will be "tricksy" in more than one way. Kitty Cheshire does not like being narrated. She seems to be aware of my watching her, and she resists. At times her thoughts and feelings squirm away from my inspection. I shall do my best, however, to narrate a completely true story about Ever After's most elusive character. ~ Shannon Hale

Human mind is the most unpredictable machine in the world. Never could one draw a reason from it.
(Dr Abin. From Broken Fourth Wall) ~ Dr. Abin

If you're doing stand-up, there is no fourth wall; you're engaging an audience. ~ Jon Glaser

Life is a cracked surface at best. Fiction is a nice edifice. / every word/sentence/paragraph gives a writer an opportunity to reinforce or deliberately crack the edifice by screwing with meaning, structure, grammar, the fourth wall, etc. / different types and degrees of cracking produce different arrangements of order and chaos. ~ K.J. Bishop

My intention, this time, was to transfer a play to the screen while keeping its theatrical character. It was in some senses a matter of walking, invisibly, around the stage and catching the different aspects and nuances in the play, the urgency and the facial expressions that escape a spectator who cannot follow them in detail from a seat in the stalls.
Apart from that, I had noticed how effective a play becomes when you have a bird's-eye view from it, for example from the flies, that is to say from the viewpoint of a voyeur. The Audience is enclosed with the characters in a room lacking its fourth wall and listens to them on equal terms, without the element of my story conferred on scenes of intimacy by the whimsical shape of a keyhole."
"L'aigle à deux têtes is not History. It is a story, an invented story lived out by imaginary heroes, and I should never have dared venture into the realistic world of cinema without being able to rely on the help of Christian Bérard. He has a genius for situating whatever he touches, for giving it a depth in time and space and an appearance of truth that are literally inimitable." (...)

"A drama of this kind would be unacceptable, and almost impossible to tell, unless it was interpreted by superb actors who could instill grandeur and life into it. Edwige Feuillère and Jean Marais, applauded evening after evening in their parts in the play, surpass themselves on the screen and give of themselves, as I suggested above, e ~ Jean Cocteau

I refuse to give readers an uplifting faux experience engineered to comfort them and perpetuate the sociopolitical and economic status quo."
"Who died and made you Bertolt Brecht? ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Like everyone is either, "I grew up with it," or "I loved it," or loved them now. And when you watch The Muppet Movie now, it is so current. It's like The Simpsons before The Simpsons. It's not as cynical as The Simpsons would be but it's self-aware and there are a billion jokes, it breaks the fourth wall every five minutes, it's astounding, it's awesome. It's very exciting to be a part of that. ~ Nicholas Stoller

There's no environment. Use your imagination. There's no fourth wall, whether it's the first time you've told this story about her life, or the sixth time. ~ Jill Clayburgh

Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in.
And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening,
quiet steady sound. Before it grew too dark
watched the blue iris leaning under the rain,
the flame of the poppies guttered and went out.
A voice. Almost recalled. There have been times
the gods entered. Entered a room, a cave?
A long enclosure where I was, the fourth wall of it
too distant or too dark to see. The birds are silent,
no moths at the lit windows. Only a swaying rosebush
pierces the table's reflection, raindrops gazing from it.
There have been hands laid on my shoulders.
What has been said to me,
how has my life replied?
The rain, the rain ... ~ Denise Levertov

Do me a favor, doc?"
"Anything, Captain."
"Stop italicizing the word 'Captain' when you say it."
"Go easy on the fourth wall there, sir."
-Captain Andreyasn & Doctor Bunnigus ~ Howard Tayler

In film, the possibilities are greater. You can go beyond the fourth wall. You can go to these incredible locations and you're put into circumstances that are physically sensuous. It sometimes requires much more of a physical talent. ~ Kim Cattrall

Ugh. Crushes are the worst, but in hindsight a crush from afar seems so much easier than this. I should stick to making up stories in my head and watching from a distance like a reasonable creeper. Now I've broken the fourth wall and if he's as friendly as his eyes tell me he is, he may notice me when I drop money in his case the next time, and I will be forced to interact smoothly or run in the opposite direction. I may be middle-of-the-pack when my mouth is closed, but as soon as I start talking to men, Lulu calls me Appalland, for how appallingly unappealing I become. Obviously, she's not wrong. And now I'm sweating under my pink wool coat, my face is melting, and I'm hit with an almost uncontrollable urge to hike my tights up to my armpits because they have slowly crept down beneath my skirt and are starting to feel like form-fitting harem pants. ~ Christina Lauren

I am not the heroine of this story.
And I'm not trying to be cute. It's the truth. I'm diagnosed borderline and seriously fucked-up. I hold grudges. I bottle my hate until it ferments into poison, and then I get high off the fumes. I'm completely dysfunctional and that's the way I like it, so don't expect a character arc where I finally find Redemption, Growth, and Change, or learn How to Forgive Myself and Others. ~ Leah Raeder

When the protagonist breaks the fourth wall by looking at the camera in a movie, it's generally been used for comedic purposes, rather than feeling like they're looking into your soul. ~ Chris Milk

Drag is like breaking the fourth wall in theater where we're letting you know straight up that this is an illusion. People are attracted to that because they know it's the truth of who they are also. No one is who they think they are. That's why people are attracted to drag. ~ RuPaul

I always wanted to experience what performance would be like without the fourth wall, so I formed a company in Australia, and we did avant-garde theater, playing with gender norms, conversations about race - we just had a box of issues that we wanted to subvert with our stories, with dance. ~ DeObia Oparei

As a business, the funeral industry has developed by selling a certain type of "dignity." Dignity is having a well-orchestrated final moment for the family, complete with a well-orchestrated corpse. Funeral directors become like directors for the stage, curating the evening's performance. The corpse is the star of the show and pains are taken to make sure the fourth wall is never broken, that the corpse does not interact with the audience and spoil the illusion. ~ Caitlin Doughty

I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third and fourth drafts. ~ Judy Blume

Yes," Kami snapped. "Yes, I matter to him. He wants to keep me to himself, he asked me to go out with him when we'd barely met, and he doesn't want to touch me."

Holly blinked. "What?"

"Him being real and me being real," Kami said. "It's been hard for us to get used to. Him having a body, it's been like being thirteen, when you can't get over how strange guys are, and you can't look at them when you sit next to them, and when your hands brush you almost have a heart attack."

"I remember that." Holly nodded. "Except I was eleven."

Kami and Angela both looked at her with raised eyebrows. Holly shrugged.

"It's been like when Holly was eleven, then," Kami said. "Except worse. Neither of us has known how to handle it, but I've wanted to. And he hasn't. I don't know what to do about someone who only wants me for my mind."

Holly slid down the wall to sit on the floor. "I can honestly say it has never happened to me."

"Yeah," said Angela. "Guys, always trying to kiss me. I have to beat them off with a stick. Seriously, I keep the stick behind the door at home. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

Our lives are stories built of small moments. Ordinary experiences. It is too easy to forget that our days are adding up to something astonishing. We do not often stop to notice the signs and wonders. The writing on the wall. ~ Christie Purifoy

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause. ~ Octavio Paz

Ch'in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They're proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant. ~ Gene Luen Yang

Fourth quarter. The Denver Broncos played the San Francisco 49ers at ~ Anonymous

It was getting difficult to see exactly what was going on in the pool and a fourth officer jumped in as one came up with the unconscious form of the first cop. While others pulled the half-drowned man from the pool, three more wrestled Skorzeny to the surface and dragged him to the steps at the shallow end of the pool. He wasn't struggling any longer. Nor was he breathing with any apparent difficulty. The biggest of the three cops later admitted to punching him as hard as he could in the stomach and Skorzey doubled over. Another half-dragged him, still on his feet, shirt torn, jacket ripped, out of the pool and put a handcuff on his left wrist.

Skorzeny pulled his arm away from the cop and, suddenly straightening, elbow-jabbed him in the gut, sending him sprawling and rolling back into the pool. Skorzeny turned toward the back
fence and was now between the pool and a small palm tree. Before him were two advancing officers, pistols leveled. Behind him two more circled the pool. Skorzeny lunged forward and all fired simultaneously. The noise was deafening. Lights in neighboring houses began to go on.

Skorzeny's body twitched and bucked as the heavy slugs ripped through his body. His forward momentum carried him into the officers ahead of him and he half-crawled, half-staggered to the southeast corner of the yard where another gate was set into the fiberglass fencing. Two more officers, across the pool, cut loose with their pistols, emptying them int ~ Jeff Rice

The people see that Wall Street is running our economic policy, that big oil is running our energy policy and the military industrial complex is determining our foreign policy ... ~ Alan Grayson

Who can tell?
Your living is an organized hell.
The mansion of your mind just an oversized cell.
The pressure, everything is done to a measure.
In the sea of competition sunk like a treasure.
Like a feather falling slow spiraling to the floor.
Strung up like a broken violin to your course.
Opportunity is knocking at your door,
But you never left a welcome mat (It doesn't matter anymore.).
Or anyhow, but you're too late to turn back.
Fate pushing you into the wall like a thumbtack.
Ain't no comebacks in this game of life.
Roll the dice again,
Roll it once, never twice.

Keep on going, and taste the stars.
Keep on growing, and raise the bar.
You're living life for the As down to the Zs,
After one drop you got a fountain to seize.

Wanna break from the world, but the world wanna break you,
The weight makes your backbone curl up and make you. ~ Tablo

It calms me to think of blue as the color of death. I have long imagined death's approch as the swell of a wave - a towering wall of blue. You will drown, the world tells me, has always told me. You will descend into a blue underworld, blue with hungry ghosts, Krishna blue, the blue faces of the ones you loved. They all drowned, too. To take a breath of water: does the thought panic or excite you? If you are in love with red then you slit or shoot. If you are in love with blue you fill your pouch with stones good for sucking and head down to the river. Any river will do. ~ Maggie Nelson

The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life. ~ Victor Hugo

Agents do nothing for the good of football. I'd like to see them lined up against a wall and machine-gunned ?some accountants and solicitors with them. ~ Graham Taylor

He took two quick steps forward, wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, and held me for his kiss. I hadn't expected it - not while he was still so close to changing. I'm sure that's why I didn't pull out of his hold.
The first touch of his lips was soft, tentative, asking where his hands had demanded. The man was diabolical. I could have resisted force, but the question of his kiss was an entirely different matter.
I leaned into him because he asked with the light touch and the gentle withdrawal of his lips that begged me to follow where he led. The heat of his body, welcome in the over-cooled house, rewarded me as I leaned closer to him, as did the hard planes of his body, so I was drawn to press even tighter against him.
He danced like that, too. Leading instead of pulling. It had to have been deliberate, something he worked at, because he was as dominant as they came - Alphas are. But Adam was more than just dominant: he was smart, too. And he didn't play fair.
Which is how he ended up against the wall with me plastered all over him when someone . . . Darryl, quietly cleared his throat.
I jerked free and hopped back to the middle of the hallway. "I'll just get Jesse's clothes now," I told the carpet on the floor and then took my red face into Jesse's room and shut the door. I didn't mind getting caught kissing, but that had been a lot more carnal than a kiss.
Sometimes good hearing isn't a blessing.
"Sorry," Daryl said, though his voi ~ Patricia Briggs

It's amazing that something only an atom thick can be an impenetrable barrier. You can have gas on one side and vacuum or liquid on the other, and with a wall only one atom thick, nothing would go through it. ~ Paul McEuen

I was looking into a darkened hallway, lined with a washing machine and dryer, and a few brooms and mops held in clamps on the wall. I put a hand on the doorknob and turned very slowly and quietly. It was unlocked. I took a deep breath - - and very nearly fell out of my skin as a horrible, shattering scream came from inside. It was the sound of anguish and horror and such a clear call for help that even Disinterested Dexter moved reflexively forward, and I had one foot actually inside the house when a tiny little question mark scuttled across the floor of my brain and I thought, I've heard that scream before. And as my second foot moved forward, farther into the house, I thought, Really? Where? The answer came quite quickly, which was comforting: it was the same scream that was on the "New Miami" videos that Weiss had made. - which meant that it was a recorded scream. - which meant it was intended to lure me inside. - which meant that Weiss was ready and waiting for me. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Successful people realize the importance of a healthy body and a healthy mind. They know that the two are inextricably inter-linked and imperative for their smooth functioning. They follow a strict regimen of healthy habits which include right eating, adherence to meal times, a holistic exercise plan that suits one' s age and a mind full of positivity. It is established that the first three invariably impact the fourth. ~ Andy Paula

I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing' was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist in Peter Hatcher. When I reached the fourth grade, I made the leap to science fiction and never looked back. ~ Jeff Kinney

Decebel could admit now that maybe he had slightly overreacted when he tore into the room and found two males rifling through her suit case. So maybe he didn't have to throw Dragos through a wall. And, yeah, he could've kept from tossing Dorian right on top of Dragos. But in that moment his wolf had taken over, and all he could think was that her scent was around unmated males, that they were touching her things – things only he should know about.
Decebel had glossed over that little tidbit, about why on earth he thought he had a right to know about her underwear.He'd felt that if he didn't get her things and her scent from their room he was going to kill someone, no doubt about it. One of those pups would have died that night. ~ Quinn Loftis

And then, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as when the reflector of a lamp that is badly fitted begins by casting all round an object, on the wall beyond it, huge and fantastic shadows which, in time, contract and are lost in the shadow of the object itself, all the terrible and disturbing ideas which he had formed of Odette melted away and vanished in the charming creature who stood there before his eyes. ~ Marcel Proust

Fourth, leading is the most effective action to take to succeed in all of life's endeavors. If you are not leading, you cannot be sure you are going in the direction you want to go. ~ W. Anton

I couldn't picture heaven. How could a place be any good at all if it didn't have the things there you enjoyed doing? If there were no comic books, no monster movies, no bikes, and no country roads to ride them on? No swimming pools, no ice cream, no summer, or barbecue on the Fourth of July? No thunderstorms, and front porches on which to sit and watch them coming? Heaven sounded to me like a library that only held books about one certain subject, yet you had to spend eternity and eternity and eternity reading them. What was heaven without typewriter paper and a magic box? ~ Robert McCammon

That was how a Salomon bond trader thought: He forgot whatever it was that he wanted to do for a minute and put his finger on the pulse of the market. If the market felt fidgety, if people were scared or desperate, he herded them like sheep into a corner, then made them pay for their uncertainty. He sat on the market until it puked gold coins. Then he worried about what he wanted to do. ~ Michael Lewis

By the 1890s, the leading Wall Street bankers were becoming increasingly disgruntled with their own creation, the National Banking System ... while the banking system was partially centralized under their leadership, it was not centralized enough. ~ Murray Rothbard

It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we've had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we've had to learn what our government is doing. ~ Glenn Greenwald

There were endless stories locked into the silent, cool mass of the Wall, so many memories of stories of so long ago, now only to be imagined. What an incredible feat of human imagination and engineering. A real tribute to visionary and tenacious (if tyrannical) leaders who held a nation together with a common goal, from dynasty to dynasty over the many centuries. ~ Braam Malherbe

The reason we have not gone to newspapers is because its a slow growth industry and I think they are dying. I'm not sure there will be newspapers in 10 years. I read newspapers every day. I even read Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. ~ Sumner Redstone

You explained how certain plants are known to propagate by sending seeds out on the breeze or on the rushing waters," I reminded him. "Your friendships are strong, like those plants. The word has been passed, and as a result, your family's needs will be met." A ~ Carol Wall

Look at the blogosphere - the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration. ~ A.C. Grayling

How long are you planning on us sitting up here, kid?" Brendan asked.
I looked over at him. He sat still, with his head leant back against the rooftop wall, his eyes closed, his hands resting on his lap.
"Sorry, is being here getting in the way of your beauty sleep?"
"I don't need beauty sleep, kid. I'm naturally this good-looking."
I snorted.
"Whatever makes you feel good, Shifter." No point boosting his ego. ~ Elizabeth Morgan

Perhaps I won't tire of her," Gray protested, just to be contrary. Because, apparently, that was how brothers behaved.
"Perhaps a dolphin will fly out of your arse. And here's an argument even you can't refuse. Grayson Shipping doesn't need a reputation for delivering damaged goods. You want me to hand George Waltham an impregnated governess?"
"I wouldn't get her with child. Give me that much credit, at least."
"I give you credit for nothing. Let's try this one last time, shall we? You made me this ship's captain. If I'm the captain, what I say goes. And I say you don't touch her. If you can't abide by my orders, take command of the ship yourself and let me go home."
"Go home and do what? Squander your fortune and talent on dirt farming?"
"Go home and take care of my own family. Go home and do what I damn well please, for once."
Cursing, Gray leaned against the wall. He knew Joss would make good on that threat, too. It hadn't been easy, coaxing his brother out of mourning. Gray had resorted to outright bullying just to convince him to take command of the Aphrodite, threatening to cut off his income unless he reported to London as agreed. But he needed Joss, if this shipping concern was to stay afloat. He'd worked too hard, sacrificed too much to see it fail.
And if Joss didn't become a willing partner, it all would have been in vain.
"Stay away from the girl, Gray."
Gray sighed. "We're on the same ship. I can't help but be near her ~ Tessa Dare

Equality does not mean justice. If the wall is equality then not everyone can look from the top of the wall ~ Ahmed

A physicist visits a colleague and notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall above the entrance. 'Do you really believe that a horseshoe brings luck?' he asks. 'No,' replies the colleague, 'but I've been told that it works even if you don't believe in it.' ~ Niels Bohr

Remember brick walls let us show our dedication. They are there to separate us from the people who don't really want to achieve their childhood dreams. ~ Randy Pausch