Selected entertainment quotes

1. If you smell what The Rock is cooking!

2. I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.

3. I'm an entertainer in the military-entertainment complex.

4. I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

5. The monsters act out our rage. They act on their worst impulses, which is appealing to a certain part of us. They get punished for it, but we've enjoyed the spectacle of their liberation.

6. I wanted to be in a band that gave bang for the buck. I wanted to be in the band who didn't look like a bunch of guys who, you know, should be in a library studying for their finals.

7. Sports is the toy department of human life.

8. If I could be reincarnated as a fabric, I would come back as a 38 double-D bra.

9. They almost had to cancel the Oscars tonight because all of the designers and stylists are still in line in San Francisco trying to marry one another.

10. And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry, Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild, And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out.

11. Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

12. I started when I was three years old, doing commercials and Modeling in New York, I liked it so much that I kept doing it.

13. There's some entertainment value in watching people juggle nitroglycerin.

14. Sport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to such an extent that it needs at least a vicarious participation in difficult feats of strength or skill or heroism in order to sustain its waning life-sense.

15. An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.

16. If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.

17. I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.

18. The first time I remember women reacting to me was when we were filming Hud in Texas. Women were literally trying to climb through the transoms at the motel where I stayed. At first, it's flattering to the ego. At first. Then you realize that they're mixing me up with the roles I play - characters created by writers who have nothing to do with who I am.

19. The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

20. Confidence is everything in this business.

21. Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. Armageddon is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

22. Most of us do not consciously look at movies.

23. I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I'm playing.

24. Go see it and see for yourself why you shouldn't go see it.

25. Give me a couple of years, and I'll make that actress an overnight success.

26. Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.

27. The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world's books. Only the trouble is that the world doesn't read its books, it borrows a detective story instead.

28. This is The Tonight Show. I can't tell you too much about it, other than the fact that this program is going to go on forever.

29. It was so sweet backstage, you should have seen it - The Teamsters were helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo.

30. I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.

31. I don't just go out there and run. I like to give people watching something exciting.

32. We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme. ... All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment. That is all they want.

33. Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

34. Disneyland is often called a magic kingdom because it combines fantasy and history, adventure and learning, together with every variety of recreation and fun designed to appeal to everyone.

35. I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

36. It's no secret that we were sticking just about every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.

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

38. You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

39. If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible.

40. I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.

41. It's just gossip, you know. Gossip is the new pornography.

42. We aren't in an information age, we are in an entertainment age.

43. You won't be able to take your eyes off the next four presenters: Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz.

44. If you smell what The Rock is cooking!

45. Look at The Rock's competition! Look at him! It looks like a big monkey came down here, took a crap, and out came Mankind!

46. If naturalists go to heaven [about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt], I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.

47. There's no business like show business.'

48. (Hollywood) hates America.

49. How many watched the President's speech last night? [half-hearted audience applause] How many watched American Idol? [thundering applause] Okay, there you go! You get the government you deserve.

50. One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

51. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.

52. Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that. On occasion? Sure. As relaxation? Great. But not full time- And a lot of people are doing that. And while they're doing that, I'll go ahead and write another novel.

53. The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall. ... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.

54. It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

55. Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless.

56. 'Disneyland is Vegas for children.'

57. I never called my work an 'art' It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

58. We have always tried to be guided by the basic idea that, in the discovery of knowledge, there is great entertainment - as, conversely, in all good entertainment there is always some grain of wisdom, humanity, or enlightenment to be gained.

59. A speech is entertaining only when serenely detached from all information.

60. With the lights out, it's less dangerous Here we are now, entertain us I feel stupid, and contagious Here we are now, entertain us.

61. She's the original good time that was had by all.

62. On the night Test faced the Great One, this is what he'll see... twelve sharpshooters stinging, eleven eyebrows raising, ten spines a'bustin, nine noggins knocking, eight kicks a'kicking, seven punches punching, six suplexes smashing, five seconds of the people chanting The Rock's name ... four Rock Bottoms, three People's Elbows, on your two buck teeth, and an ass-kicking all over New Orleans!

63. We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks - that's show business.

64. The film industry is a great industry with infinite possibilities for good and bad. Its primary purpose is to entertain people. On the side, it can do many other things. It can popularize certain ideals, it can make education palatable. But in the long run, the judge who decides whether what it does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies. In a democratic country I do not think the public will tolerate a removal of its right to decide what it thinks of the ideas and performances of those who make the movie industry work. (29 October 1947)

65. I like people to go away from a Queen show feeling fully entertained. I think Queen songs are pure escapism, like going to see a good film.

66. The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants. Nevertheless, it is also true that the serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation. He cannot but see that the power of religion, especially belief in revelation, is weaker today than it was in any other epoch in human history. More and more children grow up without faith in God, without belief in reward and punishment, in the immortality of the soul and even in the validity of ethics. The genuine writer cannot ignore the fact that the family is losing its spiritual foundation.

67. It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.

68. It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education & entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking onto the matter.

69. The words 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.

70. Colbert: (talking about reality TV): It warps the minds of our children and weakens the resolve of our allies.

71. All we ever intended for him or expected of him was that he should continue to make people everywhere chuckle with him and at him. We didn't burden him with any social symbolism, we made him no mouthpiece for frustrations or harsh satire. Mickey was simply a little personality assigned to the purposes of laughter.

72. The inclination of my life - the motto, you might call it - has been to do things which will give pleasure to people in new and amusing ways. By doing that I please and satisfy myself. It is my wish to delight all members of the family, young and old, parent and child, in the kind of entertainment my associates and I turn out of our Studio in Burbank, California.

73. The kind of entertainment we create is meant to appeal to every member of the family.

74. Speaking of things that'll make your head explode, 'Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story' finally made it to the drive-in

75. Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either

76. Have you been watching American Idol? They have Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul judging the singing. Paula Abdul?! Getting Paula Abdul to judge a singing contest is like getting Christopher Reeve to judge a dance contest!

77. If you wouldn't mind, Coach, The Rock would like to do something special with that whistle. The Rock would like to take that whistle you got, that very whistle you just put to your lips, shine it up real nice, turn that sumbitch sideways, and stick it straight up your candy ass!'

78. Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay home and see bad television for nothing.

79. Comedy is not pretty.

80. We're not trying to entertain the critics ... I'll take my chances with the public.

81. Drink, my jolly lads, drink with discerning, Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning; Never was owl more blind than a lover, Drink and be merry, lads, half seas over.

82. It's really not hard to keep your dignity and sign to a major label...Most people don't have any dignity in the first place. (1990)

83. Big Show, you think you impress the Rock? Let The Rock make something perfectly clear to you. You have never, and The Rock means never, impressed The Rock. From the time your crappy music hits... Well, it's the Big Slow! And every single Rock fan stops, pauses, and takes a look, and they all say this: 'I'm going to take a leak; this guy sucks!'

84. MANKIND: 'Rock, what I'm about to do is show the millions--' THE ROCK: (Rock holds out his hand to stop Mankind) 'Don't you EVER do that again.' LAWLER: 'Gimmick infringement!'

85. 'Tonight The Rock is going to play movie director, and let you see firsthand the unedited, uncut version of The Rock's major motion picture, entitled 'Laying The Smackdown on Your Roody-Poo Candy Ass!' And when it's all said and done, and all the smoke has cleared, and the millions and the millions of The Rock's fans have finished chanting his name, the Titanic will still be sunk, Monica Lewinsky will still love her cigars, and The Rock will have kicked the living piss out of Mankind!'

86. Finally, The Rock has come back to (name of town)!

87. The jabroni beating, pie eating, trail blazing, eye brow raising, I got a gift for you from Santa, an ass-whooping at WrestleMania like here in Atlanta!

88. There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?** mocking the TV-violence debate

89. Well, for those who like that sort of thing, I should think it is just about the sort of thing they would like.

90. If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong.

91. Behold -- the human eyeball. Okay, it's a kettle grill with a fancy paint job. Just work with me here for one second, okay, people?

92. on Iron Chef America: To be honest, I don't know who the competitors will be. When taping the episodes, I know what the secret ingredient is going to be ahead of time, but that's about it. But even that information is highly privileged. It's like they send me this encrypted message that says, 'Go to the phone booth near the corner and await further instructions. This message will self destruct in five seconds...' It's very secretive, but it's a really fun show to do.

93. Bobby Flay's getting ready to crack some coconuts. He's choosing his arsenal for that.. his head, he's using his head--which may be the hardest thing here in Kitchen Stadium, I'm not sure. (He and Flay both laugh.)

94. I don't know about you, but I think this is a mmmmoving experience. Goshdarnit, the jokes aren't getting better--but the food's gonna be real good!

95. Folks, all I can say is sit back and relax. I think we're in for a real culinary donnybrook here. (smiles proudly) That means brawl.

96. Now I have to tell you, sometimes, occasionally, when I've been very very good, the chairman allows me to glimpse the secret ingredient before that two-ton lead shield seals its secrets. Now I gotta tell you, get ready to lick your TV screens, America, because today's battle is going to send your salivary glands into hyperdrool.

97. We've been remarkably consistent, haven't lost a game and we have played stylish football. We have entertained people who just love football.

98. All I want for Christmas is another movie with Audrey Hepburn.

99. I shake my tits a lot. If you don't want to listen, you can just watch.

100. This movie's so good I gotta bust a cap in it!