Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.

It’s hard work making movies. It’s like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it’s emotional, tense work. If you don’t really love it, then it ain’t worth it.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

I am a giant proponent of giant screens. But I accept the fact that most of my movies are going to be seen on phones.

I like Aurora, ‚Sleeping Beauty,‘ because she’s just sleeping and looking pretty and waiting for boys to come kiss her. Sounds like a good life – lots of naps and cute boys fighting dragons to come kiss you.

You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through.

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It’s been printed all over, so I don’t feel like I am hiding anything.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Well, everyone likes movies when they’re a little kid.

I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

I really like children to watch my movies.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

Most of my short stories are fantasy.

I’m not a film buff. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

I cannot live without books.

Books are sharks… because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

My favorite movies of all times is ‚Doctor Zhivago,‘ and I love ‚Gone With the Wind.‘ I’d love to play some Southern belle or something where I owned a plantation.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

I am really proud that I am one of the artists that has the opportunity to be on magazine covers and to be in the movies.

I don’t read books much.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Science is magic that works.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

One of my movies was called ‚True Lies.‘ It’s what the Democrats should have called their convention.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

I’ve always loved the showmanship of professional wrestling. While I love making movies, I love that platform, too.