Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
The General (Keaton)
Raging Bull (Scorsese)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
Tokyo Story (Ozu)
The Tree of Life (Malick)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)

Those rambling philosophical voiceovers; the placid images of nature, offering quiet contrast to the evil deeds of men; the stunning cinematography, often achieved with natural light; the striking use of music—here is a filmmaker with a clear sensibility and aesthetic who makes narrative films that are neither literary nor theatrical, in the sense of foregrounding dialogue, event, or character, but are instead principally cinematic, movies that suggest narrative, emotion, and idea through image and sound.

"George Smiley: I've been reviewing my situation in the last half-hour of hell, and I've come to a very grave decision. After a lifetime of living by my wits, and on my memory, I shall give myself up full-time to the profession of forgetting. I'm going to put an end to some emotional attachments with have long outlived their purpose. Namely the Circus, this house, my whole past. I shall sell up and buy a cottage, in the Cotswolds, I think. Steeple Aston sounds about right. Do I need overnight things?
Peter Guillam: I'm not taking any.
George Smiley: There I shall establish myself as a mild eccentric. Discursive, withdrawn, but posessing one or two lovable habits, such as muttering to myself as I bumble along innocent pavements. I shall become an oak of my own generation."

"He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge."

I saw "Ikiru" first in 1960 or 1961. I went to the movie because it was playing in a campus film series and only cost a quarter. I sat enveloped in the story of Watanabe for 2 1/2 hours, and wrote about it in a class where the essay topic was Socrates' statement, "the unexamined life is not worth living."' Over the years I have seen "Ikiru" every five years or so, and each time it has moved me, and made me think. And the older I get, the less Watanabe seems like a pathetic old man, and the more he seems like every one of us.

Many screenwriters start their careers writing on speculation (spec), meaning they write without being hired or paid for it. When such a script is sold, it is called a spec script.

Chris Nolan's hand-drawn outline of Inception.

“Whenever one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.”—Jacques Yves Cousteau
- Diving for Sunken Treasure (As inscribed by the late Edward Appleby in Rushmore)

I feel brilliance.