Towne Quotes

I need the starshine of your heavenly eyes,
After the day's great sun. ~ Charles Hanson Towne

Forget it, Jake -- it's Chinatown. ~ Robert Towne

Hee that is in a towne in May loseth his spring. ~ George Herbert

I'm excited and encouraged to see people getting involved with their public lands and forests. We really need the public's help to repair these heavily used recreation sites. ~ Robert Towne

If you don't flirt, you're probably dead inside. ~ Katharine Towne

Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough. ~ Robert Towne

It was not possible to film in California, because all the areas are heavily built up now. Coming to Cape Town is an invitation to step into the past and recreate Los Angeles of the 1930s. ~ Robert Towne

It made me alive to the fact that the most important thing sometimes is what isn't said - to prepare for moments of revelation that can be read entirely on actors' faces without dialogue. ~ Robert Towne

The Engineer is one who, in the world of physics and applied sciences, begets new things, or adapts old things to new and better uses; above all, one who, in that field, attains new results in the best way and at lowest cost. ~ Henry R. Towne

All nature works, and then rests; works and rests. I caught its rhythm and worked and rested with it. When I felt that inertia stealing over me, I rested; and while resting my power recuperated - the tide rose in me. ~ Elizabeth Towne

And I think one way or another it's evident to those who work with me that as a writer, a director, a friend, as somebody's there that's very anxious to get the movie made. ~ Robert Towne

Life's book is hard to understand; Why couldst thou not remain at school? ~ Charles Hanson Towne

In dramatic writing, the very essence is character change. The character at the end is not the same as he was at the beginning. He's changed-psychologically, maybe even physically. ~ Robert Towne

These were my countrymen, these were the new Californians. With their bright polo shirts and sunglasses, they were in paradise, they belonged. But down on Main Street, down on Towne and San Pedro, and for a mile on lower Fifth Street were the tens of thousands of others; they couldn't afford sunglasses or a four-bit polo shirt and they hid in the alleys by day and slunk off to flop houses by night. A cop won't pick you up for vagrancy in Los Angeles if you wear a fancy polo shirt and a pair of sunglasses. But if there is dust on your shoes and that sweater you wear is thick like the sweaters they wear in the snow countries, he'll grab you. So get yourselves a polo shirt boys, and a pair of sunglasses, and white shoes, if you can. Be collegiate. It'll get you anyway. After a while, after big doses of the Times and the Examiner, you too will whoop it up for the sunny south. You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semi-tropical nights will reek of romance, you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.
As for the folks back home, you can lie to them, because they hate the truth anyway, they won't have it, because soon or late they want to come out to paradise, too. ~ John Fante

You're torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that's really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don't understand the process? ~ Robert Towne

Man is a magnet, and every line and dot and detail of his experiences come by his own attraction. ~ Elizabeth Towne

But, uh, censorship at that time said that you just absolutely couldn't do anything involving children and so we had to go from there. I don't remember what I changed it to. Duvall is just excellent in it. ~ Robert Towne

The villagers had decided that 'practical' meant 'extremely magical and full of interesting objects' and had officially subtitled themselves, Winesap: A Pracktical Towne. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Watching Nicholson talking Towne was like listening to Bob Dylan playing with the Band. ~ Peter Biskind

The dollar is the final term in almost every equation which arises in the practice of engineering in any or all of its branches, except qualifiedly as to military and naval engineering, where in some cases cost may be ignored. ~ Henry R. Towne

Finally, Colin Farrell showed up on my doorstep, only he wasn't Colin Farrell - he was just this Irish kid who had read the script and wanted to do it. ~ Robert Towne

If you can find meaning in the type of running you need todo to stay on this team, chances are you can find meaning in another absurd pastime: Life. ~ Robert Towne

If you have a good ear for dialogue, you just can't help thinking about the way people talk. You're drawn to it. And the obsessive interest in it forces you to develop it. You almost can't help yourself. ~ Robert Towne

Every search for a hero must begin with something which every hero requires - a villain. ~ Robert Towne

How much are you worth?
I have no idea. How much do you want?
Naw.I just want to know what you're worth. Over ten million?
Oh, my, yes.
Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?
The future, Mr. Gittes! The future! ~ Robert Towne

Larry Grobel senses there are no answers in life, only questions. Good ones. ~ Robert Towne

Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end,
Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone.
And I never see my old friends face,
For life is a swift and terrible race,
He knows I like him just as well,
As in the days when I rang his bell.
And he rang mine but we were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men.
Tired of playing a foolish game,
Tired of trying to make a name.
"Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim
Just to show that I'm thinking of him",
But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
And distance between us grows and grows.
Around the corner, yet miles away,
"Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today."
And that's what we get and deserve in the end.
Around the corner, a vanished friend. ~ Charles Hanson Towne

What makes screenplays difficult are the things that require the most discipline and care and are just not seen by most people. I'm talking about movement - screenwriting is related to math and music, and if you zig here, you know you have to zag there. It's like the descriptions for a piece of music - you go fast or slow or with feeling. It's the same. ~ Robert Towne

Yoga changed my life. I go between 4 and 6 times a week. It's incredibly grounding and an intense level of focus. ~ Katharine Towne

The monogram of our national initials, which is the symbol for our monetary unit, the dollar, is almost as frequently conjoined to the figures of an engineer's calculations as are the symbols indicating feet, minutes, pounds, or gallons ... This statement, while true in regard to the work of all engineers, applies particularly to that of the mechanical engineer ... ~ Henry R. Towne

I'm not in business to be loved, but I am in business. ~ Robert Towne

I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible. ~ Robert Towne

The money you attract is the exact measure of value of the ideas you have succeeded in externalizing. ~ Elizabeth Towne