John Logan Quotes

Everything worthwhile ends. We are in the perpetual process now: creation, maturation, cessation. ~ John Logan

Cinema is a visual language, and you're always looking for visual metaphors for things. You know, if I was writing a play about Howard Hughes, I could have him give a monologue about how he's terrified to touch a doorknob. But on screen, you know, working with Marty Scorsese in 'The Aviator,' that became the series of images that told a story. ~ John Logan

Don't waste your time obsessing over stupid actions of stupid people ~ Elle Kennedy

When I started earning money from screen-writing, for a long time my only indulgences were books. ~ John Logan

I couldn't write a happy movie or romantic comedy to save my life. Yes, Noel Coward's an idol, but his plays are serious to me. 'Private Lives' and 'Design for Living' both have an edge. Without psychoanalyzing myself, I think I exorcise my demons in my work. ~ John Logan

When I look at my own children, Mrs Hargreaves, I think ... I think I know what childhood's for. It's to give us a bank of happy memories against future suffering. So when sadness comes, at least you can remember what it was to be happy. ~ John Logan

In the place called Adulthood there are no Cheshire Cats ... for they can't endure the suffering of the place. ~ John Logan

I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ... the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.
-Senator John Logan, 1883 ~ Dee Brown

I would rather die on my feet than spend a lifetime on my knees ~ John Logan

‪I do get depressed when I think how people are going to see my pictures. If they're going to be unkind... Selling a picture is like sending a blind child into a room full of razor blades. It's going to get hurt and it's never been hurt before, it doesn't know what hurt is.‬ ~ John Logan

If you look at the muscularity of something like 'Wicked' and the way it has just spawned sort of generations of young people wanting to get involved in the theatre - it's brilliant. ~ John Logan

I grew up loving monsters. I'm just a total monster geek. When I was a kid, I had the Aurora monster models, and I would make them. I loved the Universal horror movies and the Hammer movies. I just had an affinity for them. ~ John Logan

Any adaptation - and I've done three in my career. I did 'Sweeney Todd' and 'Hugo' and 'Coriolanus.' It's important to find what makes it a movie as opposed to just a film presentation of a stage play. ~ John Logan

I'm not interested in characters who aren't broken. I'm not interested in happy people. It just doesn't draw me as a writer. ~ John Logan

You would have loved Jackson. He was a downtown guy, a real Bohemian. No banker's hours for him, believe you me. Every night the drinking and the talking and the fighting and the dancing and the staying up late; like everyone's romantic idea of what an artist ought to be: the anti-Rothko... At his worst you still loved him though; you loved him because he loved art so much... He thought it mattered. He thought painting mattered... Does not the poignancy stop your heart?... How could this story not end in tragedy?

Goya said, 'We have Art that we may not perish from Truth.'... Pollock saw some truth. Then he didn't have art to protect him any more... Who could survive that?

I was walking up to my house last week and this couple was passing. Lady looks in the window, says: 'I wonder who owns all the Rothkos.'... Just like that I'm a noun. A Rothko. ~ John Logan

But how can you be Peter Pan? You? The Boy Who Never Grew Up? That's not you. You have egg on your collar. You can't fly. You're not Alice. Alice was a blond little girl, I know it. You're lying to me.' And then they remember. What growing up really is: when they learned that boys can't fly and mermaids don't exist and White Rabbits don't talk and all boys grow old, even Peter Pan, as you've grown old. They've been deceived. As if you've somehow been lying to them. So following hard on the smile of remembrance is the pain in the eyes, which you've caused, everytime you meet someone. ~ John Logan

You want to be a thing? Make yourself that thing. ~ John Logan

Everything about 'Hugo' to me is poignant, from the broken orphan to the old man losing his past to the fragility of film itself. ~ John Logan

Working with Ridley is working with one of the great filmmakers and one of the great raconteurs. You know, it's like, a dinner with Ridley Scott or a dinner with Martin Scorsese? You just want to cut your arm off to get those. ~ John Logan

Theater people say you are either a comedian or a tragedian, and I'm a tragedian. And the vexing, dark characters, the ones where I don't understand their pain or their anguish, they are the characters that appeal to me. ~ John Logan

We wanted 'Hugo' to be a cornucopia of cinema, a celebration of everything we do in movies. ~ John Logan

ROTHKO: (Explodes) 'Pretty.' 'Beautiful.' 'Nice.' 'Fine.' That's our life now! Everything's 'fine'. We put on the funny nose and glasses and slip on the banana peel and the TV makes everything happy and everyone's laughing all the time, it's all so goddamn funny, it's our constitutional right to be amused all the time, isn't it? We're a smirking nation, living under the tyranny of 'fine.' How are you? Fine.. How was your day? Fine. How are you feeling? Fine. How did you like the painting? Fine. What some dinner? Fine ... Well, let me tell you, everything is not fine!!
HOW ARE YOU?! ... HOW WAS YOUR DAY?! ... HOW ARE YOU FEELING? Conflicted. Nuanced. Troubled. Diseased. Doomed. I am not fine. We are not fine. We are anything but fine. ~ John Logan

Working on 'Skyfall' was the most enjoyable experience I've ever had on a movie, ever. ~ John Logan

I enjoy all forms of writing, but playwrighting is what made me what I am. Not only working with the ghosts of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare, but what it is to be a playwright, to be interacting with human beings in the live theater and affect people on such a direct, emotional level. ~ John Logan

We can't live in a fantasy. Reality may be hard, but it's all we have. ~ John Logan

You have a lot to learn, young man. Philosophy. Theology. Literature. Poetry. Drama. History. Archeology. Anthropology. Mythology. Music. These are your tools as much as brush and pigment. You cannot be an artist until you are civilized. You cannot be civilized until you learn. To be civilized is to know where you belong in the continuum of our art and your world. To surmount the past, you must know the past. ~ John Logan

And if I sit in that room at the top of the house and I think about my life and if I shut my eyes from time to time and imagine being warm in the summer and I hear the bees buzzing and for a moment I truly am Alice in Wonderland, do you have the heart to tell me I am not? ~ John Logan

But a generation that does not aspire to seriousness, to meaning, is unworthy to walk in the shadow of those who have gone before, I mean those who have struggled and surmounted, I mean those who have aspired, I mean Rembrandt, I mean Turner, I mean Michelangelo and Matisse ... I mean obviously Rothko. ~ John Logan

When I was your age, art was a lonely thing: no galleries, no collecting, no critics, no money. We didn't have mentors. We didn't have parents. We were alone. But it was a great time, because we had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. ~ John Logan

I fell in love with Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone and Hitchcock and Orson Welles and John Huston. ~ John Logan

Honestly, not being evasive, but the great thing about Bond is that I have fifty years of movies - 23 movies and all the Ian Fleming novels and short stories, all of which are fodder. And when I'm working on the new Bond, I'm constantly going back to Fleming and the other movies - what are the bits and pieces, what are the resonances? ~ John Logan

While tributes to Americans who had lost their lives in battle had been held in a number of towns across the nation, one of the more well-known stories about the beginnings of Memorial Day is the story about General John Logan. ~ John Linder

The reason that I'm a writer today is because of Shakespeare and falling in love with Shakespeare when I was 8. That was through the movies, actually - through Olivier's 'Hamlet.' That was the first thing that got me to fall in love with Shakespeare and movies and everything in one big preadolescent rush. ~ John Logan

Behold congenial Autumn comes, the Sabbath of the Year. ~ John Logan

The most important thing about technology is that it can seamlessly work its way into your routine and your life. ~ John Legend

I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language. ~ John Dryden

Yes, well, in that respect and many others, American high schools do rather resemble prisons. ~ John Green

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events. ~ John Berger

I do believe the most important thing I can do now is to help young people understand the past and prepare for the future. ~ John C. Stennis

I see no women out here, and you're chanting about a male organ, now tell me who's the fruit booty? ~ John Layfield

Does an iris seek to repay the sun which gave it life? No. The mere beauty of the iris is tenfold thanks enough for each day the sun can see the wonder it created. ~ John Shors

And let these altars, wreathed with flowers And piled with fruits, awake again Thanksgivings for the golden hours, The early and the latter rain! ~ John Greenleaf Whittier

The distinction, therefore, between general names, and individual or singular names, is fundamental; and may be considered as the first grand division of names. ~ John Stuart Mill

Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, the habits you are developing now will be with you for the rest of your life. ~ John Wooden

By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire. ~ John Cleese

Every relationship in your organization will affect you one way or another. Those who do not increase you will inevitably decrease you. ~ John C. Maxwell

Thank God for our form of government. The media won't let there be any cover-up. ~ John McCain

It was well known that Liza Hamilton and the Lord God held similar convictions on nearly every subject. ~ John Steinbeck

Acting is a win-win situation. There is no risk involved. That's why I get tired of hearing actors who try to make out that there's a downside to it. Fame is an odd thing. It bugs you a little bit, but it's really not bad. ~ John Corbett

I dream that someone in space says to me: So let us rush, then, to see the world. It is shaped like an egg, covered with seas and continents, warmed and lighted by the sun. It has churches of indescribable beauty, raised to gods that have never been seen; cities whose distant roofs and smokestacks will make your heart leap; ballparks and comfortable auditoriums in which people listen to music of the most serious import; to celebrate life is recorded. Here the joy of women's breasts and backsides, the colors of water, the shapes of trees, athletes, dreams, houses, the shapes of ecstasy and dismay, the shape even of an old shoe, are celebrated. Let us rush to see the world. They serve steak there on jet planes, and dance at sea. They have invented musical instruments to express love, peaceableness; to stir the finest memories and aspirations. They have invented games to catch the hearts of young men. They have ceremonies to exalt the love of men and women. They make their vows to music and the sound of bells. They have invented ways to heat their houses in the winter and cool them in the summer. They have even invented engines to cut their grass. They have free schools for the pursuit of knowledge, pools to swim in, zoos, vast manufactories of all kinds. They explore space and the trenches of the sea. Oh, let us rush to see this world. ~ John Cheever

Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgements to Joseph Conrad. ~ John Le Carre

I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation. ~ John Green

If I wake up in the morning and I don't want to get you a coffee or if I don't see you for a week and I don't want to go figure out something to FedEx you, then we've got a problem. You can fake the words I miss you, but you can't fake getting someone a book. ~ John Mayer

Many ... have tremendous God-given gifts, but they don't focus on the development of those gifts. Who are these individuals? You've never heard of them- and you never will . ~ John Wooden

I believe that writing is an account of the powers of extrication. ~ John Cheever

There was clearly great charm and worth in a sport so quaintly perverse in its basic instructions. Hit down to make the ball rise. Swing easy to make it go far. Finish high to make it go straight. ~ John Updike

There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books. ~ John Hersey

He is as much a part of the Derby tradition as the Twin Spires themselves ~ John Mallory Asher

In our community here in Boston, we have had a tremendous influx of Russian Jews and Haitians. We call these people immigrants. But they come for the same reasons that William Bradford and William Brewster and John Carver came. ~ Kathryn Lasky

Those who trade liberty for security have neither. ~ John Adams

Stop blaming your parents. If you're really angry at 60 years old, you're an idiot! You've got to work some of it out. ~ John Waters

Sacred cows don't tip easily. ~ John Corvino

It isn't enough to shock. It's easy to shock. Real surprise is what I'm after. ~ John Waters

I used to think this was all about good and evil," said Rickett, "but it's not."
"No?"
"There's a kind of evil that isn't even in opposition to good, because good is an irrelevance to it. It's a foulness that's right at the heart of existence, born with the stuff of the universe. It's in the decay to which all things tend. It is, and it always will be, but in dying we leave it behind."
"And while we're alive?"
"We set our souls against it, and our saints and angels, too." He patted Parker on the shoulder. "Especially the destroying ones. ~ John Connolly

Admittance into the true church of Christ is based on regeneration, not merely on an affirmation of a creed or doctrine. The ~ John Bunyan

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it. ~ John Galsworthy

It's not because I want to make out with her."
Hold on." He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excitedly at the paper as if he'd just made a mathematical breakthrough and then looked back up at me. "I just did some calculations, and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit ~ John Green

Africa and its people are the most written about and the least understood of all of the world's people. This condition started in the 15th and the 16th centuries with the beginning of the slave trade system. The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people. ~ John Henrik Clarke

The good gringo asked Lupe if she forgave him for sleeping with her mother. "Yes," Lupe said, "but we can't ever get married. ~ John Irving

John Cassavetes was there at night while I was working. After they [with his friends] discussed as much live TV as they felt they needed to, they started improvising scenes just for the fun of it and one of those scenes everybody got very interested in and it turned into Shadows [1959]. That movie was entirely improvised. ~ Gena Rowlands

You called me poet-priest - I am ... devoted to my art, faithful to you ... or, is the other way around? ... ~ John Geddes

Sell a stock only when you have found a new stock that is a 50% better bargain than the one that you hold. ~ John Templeton

It's amazing how many people are being fed because of this crazy little thing we started. We're feeding millions and it is not costing anyone anything. ~ John Van Hengel

He tells a story, and that's what I like. Does this fella tell a story? He doesn't spend twenty pages describing the colour of the sky?'
'He hasn't so far.'
'Good. Jeffrey Archer never talks about the colour of the sky and I like that in a writer. I'd say Jeffrey Archer has never even looked up at the sky his entire life.'
'Especially now that he's in prison,' I suggested. ~ John Boyne

It's time to stop producing stuff, and start producing fun. ~ John Sherman