Roger Ebert

“If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your social security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience.”

“No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.”

“Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.”

“We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls.”

“So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I'll see you at the movies.”

“The movies are like a machine that generates empathy.”

“It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.”

“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.”

“Kindness covers all of my political beliefs. No, it is not a political belief. It is a human belief.”

“To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.”

“The very essence of the cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.”

“A movie is not what it is about, but how it is about it.”

“We are all born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people.”