Vincent Canby

“A bad movie is a personal experience.”

“A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact, not just with the movie but with yourself.”

“The only thing that I have done that is not mitigated by luck, diminished by good fortune, is that I persisted, and other people gave up.”

“An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.”

“Having a favorite director is like having a favorite screw-driver.”

“In America, the least amusing people are its professional comedians.”

“The first-rate actor is not a selfless empty vessel who is filled with the character he is playing. He is a complicated, willful, self-centered, intelligent, emotional animal.”

“More and more, as I think about history, I am convinced that everything is interesting if you look at it long enough.”

“For a film critic, a bad film is a professional hazard.”

“It's one of the functions of the theater to shock and instruct, sometimes in that order.”