Noir Quotes

Yeah, I was always a big fan of noir.

I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.

It's a noir world. Unfair things happen.

I'm not Josh Brolin or Ryan Gosling. They're more noir than I.

Is there something in druggy subjects that encourages directors to make imitation film noir? Film noir itself becomes an addiction.

I think the original Matrix was really incredible. It was so original and it did so many innovative things with film. It was a much bigger film. Bound was just a smaller film. It was kind of like an old noir film

I'm really a sucker for old, old movies. Like old film noir. I don't know. I also really enjoy independent movies.

One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines.

I admire hard-bitten, wisecracking realism of Ida Lupino and the film noir heroines. I'm sick of simpering white girls with their princess fantasies.

There were some things that I found I really enjoyed singing about; like, on the title track, there's this film-noir character of a woman who's sort of losing it in a room.

You would kill or enslave everyone? There is so much beauty in the world that they’d destroy. How do you not see it? (Delphine) Spoken like someone who has only lived in the cushioned world of dreams. You have no idea what the real world is like. What people will do to you when they know they can get away with it. People are absolutely cruel and I say more power to Noir for tearing it down. (Jericho)

I was always into noir. When I lived in Vermont I was drawing stuff that looked like an amateur doing 'Sin City'. When I first got to New York I was swiftly informed that they only did guys in tights.

There is something missing in a lot of digital filmmaking, something I call "poetic reality." That's something you see played out in film noir, where the technique establishes the mood.

Anything that has to do with noir and space, I'm gonna love. When you've got a noir-ish, pulpy detective in a science fiction show, I'm all in, in that regard.

As the tall dark and handsome male star, Carey Grant always stands for male beauty and desirability, whether in a 30s screwball, a 40s film noir, or a 50s romantic comedy. He consequently turns around the orthodox gender between the one who looks and so desires, and the one who is looked at, and so is being desired.

In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.

I pity those born of the lighter side. They have no understanding of how seductive cruelty is. The music made out of screams and pleas for mercy. Mmmm. Nothing better. (Noir)

It's tucked away in a quiet corner, shadowed and obscured, no part of the Nightside's usual bright gaudy neon noir. It doesn't advertise and it doesn't care if you habitually pass by on the other side. It's just there for when you need it. Dedicated to the patron saint of lost causes, St. Jude's is an old old place... St. Jude's isn't a place for comfort for frills and fancies and the trappings of religion. just a place where you can talk to your god and sometimes get an answer.

(In) most cop shows, every cop in the squad speaks exactly the same and the same kind of short clipped film noir-ish talk.

I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to trust Noir. Come to the dark side. We have cookies. (Zeth)

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.

Going back to the noir fiction of the 30s, 40s and 50s. It's very contemporary.

But, number one, I think traditional noir doesn't work in contemporary storytelling because we don't live in that world anymore

Yes, to me that's one of the most compelling fears in film noir and the psychological thriller genre - that fear of conspiracy. It's definitely something that I have a fear of - not being in control of your own life. I think that's something people can relate to, and those genres are most successful when they derive the material from genuine fears that people have.

There are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.

Flawed characters... a ticking clock... morally questionable acts on all sides... moody, evocative art... oh yeah, this the stuff crime noir fans love!

I'd love to do a noir. I think Steve McQueen is so cool. But a classic film is a classic film, and perhaps the fantasy of being those characters should be left alone. You're treading on very thin ice.

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

Pinot noir is the ultimate wine to have at the table. It's a white wine masquerading as red...[while] chardonnay is a red masquerading as a white.

CEREMONY OF FLIES hits the road like a nitrous-fueled GTO...and then pulls the ultimate stunt of getting better. What starts as a deceptively simple hard-boiled noir story twists on itself and adds layers and grows stranger and before you know it, BAM - it's the end of the world and all you can do is hang on by your fingernails. This really, truly is one of the best novellas I've read in years.

I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, and noir movies like Fuller, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s, I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just wanted men in tights.

When I was making these damned pictures, I never knew about film noir. If you had asked me about it then, I probably would have pointed to something like Bill Wellman's The Ox Bow Incident, the best Western I ever saw and very much in the style of film noir  I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross that defines what kind of drama it is.

I'm a huge fan of Cabernet and Bordeaux, and am passionate about Pinot Noir and Burgundies.

This is what noir is, what it can be when it stops playing nice--blunt force drama stripped down to the bone, then made to dance across the page.

Blade Runner's just a noir at the end of the day. Rosemary's Baby is about the fear of having a child and how that gets in the way of a romantic relationship. Or whatever it is, and you add that extra element that blows your mind apart.

I am grateful for what I call well-spent moments: Making a tuna fish sandwich with the works. Taking at least a half hour to eat it outside. Ironing my vintage tea towels while watching old black-and-white film noir movies and sipping one martini with extra olives - a quirky combination, but it works.

Women sometimes really love to look at other beautiful women on the screen. But they don't look at a woman the way a man looks at a woman. They want to be that woman. They like if a woman is beautiful or sexy, especially if she's powerful. They like to see her catch a man, or to be powerful in the world. I think this is why a lot of women love noir films and classic films because they can really identify with these really strong, beautiful women. That's the kind of power that women have lost culturally.

Film noir has a mood that everyone can feel. It’s people in trouble, at night, with a little bit of wind and the right kind of music. It’s a beautiful thing.

No viticultural region in America has demonstrated as much progress in quality and potential for greatness as... the Santa Barbara region, where the Burgundian varietals Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are planted in its cooler climates.

Drawing Dead is a brilliant noir from one of Australia's most exciting new novelists.

Experience has taught me never to trust a policeman. Just when you think one's all right, he turns legit.

Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For the purposes of the book and my longtime working understanding and definition of it, noir stories are bleak, existential, alienated, pessimistic tales about losers--people who are so morally challenged that they cannot help but bring about their own ruin.

The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time.

Are you always this random? (Jericho) Mostly. It really irritates Noir. Which is just an added bonus for me. At least so long as I can outrun him. (Asmodeus) Add me to that list of people you annoy. (Jericho) Oh. You’re not going to singe my testicles over it, are you?! (Asmodeus) No plans to. (Jericho) Good. We can be friends, then. (Asmodeus)

I always find myself gravitating to the analogy of a maze. Think of film noir and if you picture the story as a maze, you don't want to be hanging above the maze watching the characters make the wrong choices because it's frustrating. You actually want to be in the maze with them, making the turns at their side, that keeps it more exciting...I quite like to be in that maze.

In alchemical treatises, the formula L'Oeuvre au Noir ... designates what is said to be the most difficult phase of the alchemist's process, the separation and dissolution of substance. It is still not clear whether the term applied to daring experiments on matter itself, or whether it was understood to symbolize trials of the mind in discarding all forms of routine and prejudice. Doubtless it signified one or the other meaning alternately, or perhaps both at the same time.

I envied women with signature hair-dos, signature perfumes, signature sign-offs. Novelists who tell Vogue Magazine: “I can’t live without my Smythson notebook, Pomegranate Noir cologne by Jo Malone and Frette sheets”. In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system.

Jody Houser, who writes Mother Panic, has this noir-ish superhero style. She's very adaptable.

Horror hostess, bondage goddess, Charles Addams cartoon comes to life, Vampire was every first-generation fanboy's wet dream. Scott Poole takes us on an unforgettable ride through the overlapping underworlds of B&D magazines, Hollywood noir, and early political liberation movements that inspired actress Maila Nurmi to challenge a postwar culture bent on stifling women's choices, bodies, and desires. This book is a subversive masterpiece.

I'm not a fan of action movies. I don't watch many action movies, I don't have a lot of references except for 70s action movies or cinema noir.