“
To live will be an awfully big adventure.
”
”
J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)
“
Barack intrigued me. He was not like anyone I’d dated before, mainly because he seemed so secure. He was openly affectionate. He told me I was beautiful. He made me feel good. To me, he was sort of like a unicorn—unusual to the point of seeming almost unreal. He never talked about material things, like buying a house or a car or even new shoes. His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind. He read late into the night, often long after I’d fallen asleep, plowing through history and biographies and Toni Morrison, too. He read several newspapers daily, cover to cover. He kept tabs on the latest book reviews, the American League standings, and what the South Side aldermen were up to. He could speak with equal passion about the Polish elections and which movies Roger Ebert had panned and why.
”
”
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
I’ll put this in words you can understand: humans are hideous, pain-guzzling, pollution-spouting space monsters who might threaten our way of life. Now, how does that usually pan out in the movies, kitten? At least we let you try to convince us we’re wrong. I doubt you asked the dodo birds what they thought about it before you blasted the last one in the face with a blunderbuss.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (Space Opera (Space Opera, #1))
“
I guess its time you officially met the lost boys," I said to Daniel.
"Lost boys? You mean like that old Kiefer Sutherland movie?
"What? No, I mean like Peter Pan and the lost boys."
"Is she calling us fairies?" Asked Slade.
"No," Brent said. "She means the lost boys that never wanted to grow up, and got into mischief with Peter Pan."
"Still sounds like fairies to me." Slade crossed his tattooed arms in front of his chest.
"Still sounds like that Kiefer Sutherland movie to me." Daniel smirked.
"We were in the play together, like, seven years ago. You were mad because my mom made you wear tights, but you wanted to be a pirate."
Daniel held his hand up. "Partial amnesia here, remember? I must have blocked out any and all recollections associations with said tights."
Brent, Zach, and Ryan laughed. Slade almost cracked a smile.
~ Grace, Daniel, and The Lost Boys
”
”
Bree Despain (The Savage Grace (The Dark Divine, #3))
“
He's fucking stone cold deadpan. His pan is so dead he could lay it in a casket and bury it at Bellevue. They made a movie about him once: Dawn of Ivan's Pan.
”
”
Charlotte Stein (Deep Desires)
“
The fancy things I like are sheets. Pots and pans. And the things I really like aren't fancy at all: old aprons and hankies. Butter wrappers from one pound blocks. Peony bushes, hardback books of poetry. And I like things less than that; the sticky remains at the bottom of the apple crisp dish. The way cats sometimes run sideways. The presence of a rainbow in a puddle of oil. Mayonaise jars. Pussy willows. Wash on a line. The tick-tock of clocks, the blue of the neon sign at the local movie house. The fact that there is a local movie house.
”
”
Elizabeth Berg
“
If this were a movie, everyone would have been in the airlock, and there would have been high fives all around. But it didn’t pan out that way.
”
”
Andy Weir (The Martian)
“
So how about this,” he said, focusing on the pan. “The next time we get the chance, you and I can go see a movie.
”
”
C.L. Stone (Drop of Doubt (The Ghost Bird, #5))
“
The fire alarm went off. Fire engines came racing; we all rushed out on the gravel drive, everyone thinking it was us. In fact, one of the elderly residents of Saltram had left a pan on the oven in her flat. Apparently this happens all the time. The tenant in question is appearing as an extra -- playing one of the cooks.
”
”
Emma Thompson (The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film)
“
I want to tell [him] everything - everything that has ever happened to me, every observation I have ever had, and I want to share every book, song, or movie I have ever loved
”
”
Jessica Pan (Graduates in Wonderland: The International Misadventures of Two (Almost) Adults)
“
And though it has been in no way a romantic evening, she embraces me and this time emanates a warmth I’m not familiar with. I am so used to imagining everything happening the way it occurs in movies, visualizing things falling somehow into the shape of events on a screen, that I almost hear the swelling of an orchestra, can almost hallucinate the camera panning low around us, fireworks bursting in slow motion overhead, the seventy-millimeter image of her lips parting and the subsequent murmur of “I want you” in Dolby sound. But my embrace is frozen and I realize, at first distantly and they with greater clarity, that the havoc raging inside me is gradually subsiding and she is kissing me on the mouth and this jars me back into some kind of reality and I lightly push her away. She glances up at me fearfully.
“Listen, I’ve got to go,” I say, checking my Rolex. “I don’t want to miss… Stupid Pet Tricks.
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)
“
Watch a good movie sometime without reference to what’s happening but only with attention to how it was photographed; you’ll see the change of focus—zoom in, pan out, close-up on face, fade to black, open from above—easily. You want to do that in what you write; it’s one of the things that keep people’s eyes on the page, though they’re almost never conscious of it.
”
”
Diana Gabaldon ("I Give You My Body . . .": How I Write Sex Scenes)
“
She looked me in the eye without saying anything. We both knew what was going to happen next. There would never be a better moment. I leaned over and kissed her on the lips and if we had have been actors in a movie, the camera would have panned upwards at that point to capture fireworks exploding in the sky. I didn't need any fireworks or orchestral symphonies to complete the moment though, because for me it was perfect exactly the way it was.
”
”
Ronan O'Brien (Confessions of a Fallen Angel)
“
What people didn’t get about tragedy, people who hadn’t yet had the privilege of going through it, is that it could be so casual. When bad news came, it was never like the movies. No dramatic score building to a crescendo. No slow pan of the camera. It struck out of nowhere—a midday phone call while you were at work. A sentence uttered—“It’s probably fine”—that would replay henceforth on a loop.
”
”
Leah Konen (The Perfect Escape)
“
There were rat footprints in the dried lard in the frying pan. Sometimes the rats woke me, but this time I had slept through their visit. They were now a fact of life, like dogs or pigeons.
It was Raeberry Street, Maryhill, Glasgow in 1975. The cleansing department was on strike, and mountains of plastic bags full of garbage were piled in the back courts of the crumbling tenements. The flats didn’t have bathrooms or hot water, just closet-sized toilets.
”
”
Barry Graham (When the Light-Bulb Is Bare: Essays on Horror and Noir)
“
Nobody knew what he knew. The whirl of time, the true life inside him. This was his leverage, his only control. He watched his mother browning the flour, her hands rising sticky-white from the heavy-bottomed pan. He ran messages to steamship lines. He lay near sleep, falling into reverie, the powerful world of Oswald-hero, guns flashing in the dark. The reverie of control, perfection of rage, perfection of desire, the fantasy of night, rain-slick streets, the heightened shadows of men in dark coats, like men on movie posters. The dark had a power.
”
”
Don DeLillo
“
We walk inside, and I stop short. Our booth, the one we always sit in, has pale pink balloons tied around it. There’s a round cake in the center of the table, tons of candles, pink frosting with sprinkles and Happy Birthday, Lara Jean scrawled in white frosting. Suddenly I see people’s heads pop up from under the booths and from behind menus--all of our friends, still in their prom finery: Lucas, Gabe, Gabe’s date Keisha, Darrell, Pammy, Chris. “Surprise!” everyone screams.
I spin around. “Oh my God, Peter!”
He’s still grinning. He looks at his watch. “It’s midnight. Happy birthday, Lara Jean.”
I leap up and hug him. “This is just exactly what I wanted to do on my prom night birthday and I didn’t even know it.” Then I let go of him and run over to the booth.
Everyone gets out and hugs me. “I didn’t even know people knew it was my birthday tomorrow! I mean today!” I say.
“Of course we knew it was your birthday,” Lucas says.
Darrell says, “My boy’s been planning this for weeks.”
“It was so endearing,” Pammy says. “We called me to ask what kind of pan he should use for the cake.”
Chris says, “He called me, too. I was like, how the hell should I know?”
“And you!” I hit Chris on the arm. “I thought you were leaving to go clubbing!”
“I still might after I steal some fries. My night’s just getting started, babe.” She pulls me in for a hug and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Happy birthday, girl.”
I turn to Peter and say, “I can’t believe you did this.”
“I baked that cake myself,” he brags. “Box, but still.” He takes off his jacket and pulls a lighter out of his jacket pocket and starts lighting the candles. Gabe pulls out a lit candle and helps him. Then Peter hops his butt on the table and sits down, his legs hanging off the edge. “Come on.”
I look around. “Um…”
That’s when I hear the opening notes of “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. My hands fly to my cheeks. I can’t believe it. Peter’s recreating the end scene from Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwald and Jake Ryan sit on a table with a birthday cake in between them. When we watched the movie a few months ago, I said it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. And now he’s doing it for me.
”
”
Jenny Han (Always and Forever, Lara Jean (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #3))
“
In a seedy cinema on ru du Temple, watching Disney's Peter Pan with my son, I found that although we were all gazing at the same screen in the flickering dark, I was seeing a different film to the rest of the audience. What seemed fantastical and exotic to the Parisian kids looked like home to me. I knew secret coves and hidey-holes like those of the Lost Boys. I'd grown up in a world of rocky islands, boats and obscuring bush. To my mind the only setting that was alien - even whimsical - was the cold, lonely nursery in the Darling family attic. The wild opportunity of Neverland with its freedom from adult surveillance was deeply, warmly familiar. Watching the movie for the umpteenth time and seeing it anew, forsaking story and focusing greedily on the backdrop, I understood what a complete stranger I was in that hemisphere. But acknowledging my strangeness made those years abroad easier to digest and enjoy.
”
”
Tim Winton (Island Home)
“
Why can't we sit together? What's the point of seat reservations,anyway? The bored woman calls my section next,and I think terrible thoughts about her as she slides my ticket through her machine. At least I have a window seat. The middle and aisle are occupied with more businessmen. I'm reaching for my book again-it's going to be a long flight-when a polite English accent speaks to the man beside me.
"Pardon me,but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats.You see,that's my girlfriend there,and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes,I thought she might need someone to hold back her hair when...well..." St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically.
The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend?
"Thank you.I was in forty-five G." He slides into the vacated chair and waits for the man to disappear before speaking again. The guy onhis other side stares at us in horror,but St. Clair doesn't care. "They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There's no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together."
"That's flattering,thanks." But I laugh,and he looks pleased-until takeoff, when he claws the armrest and turns a color disturbingy similar to key lime pie. I distract him with a story about the time I broke my arm playing Peter Pan. It turned out there was more to flying than thinking happy thoughts and jumping out a window. St. Clair relaxes once we're above the clouds.
Time passes quickly for an eight-hour flight.
We don't talk about what waits on the other side of the ocean. Not his mother. Not Toph.Instead,we browse Skymall. We play the if-you-had-to-buy-one-thing-off-each-page game. He laughs when I choose the hot-dog toaster, and I tease him about the fogless shower mirror and the world's largest crossword puzzle.
"At least they're practical," he says.
"What are you gonna do with a giant crossword poster? 'Oh,I'm sorry Anna. I can't go to the movies tonight. I'm working on two thousand across, Norwegian Birdcall."
"At least I'm not buying a Large Plastic Rock for hiding "unsightly utility posts.' You realize you have no lawn?"
"I could hide other stuff.Like...failed French tests.Or illegal moonshining equipment." He doubles over with that wonderful boyish laughter, and I grin. "But what will you do with a motorized swimming-pool snack float?"
"Use it in the bathtub." He wipes a tear from his cheek. "Ooo,look! A Mount Rushmore garden statue. Just what you need,Anna.And only forty dollars! A bargain!"
We get stumped on the page of golfing accessories, so we switch to drawing rude pictures of the other people on the plane,followed by rude pictures of Euro Disney Guy. St. Clair's eyes glint as he sketches the man falling down the Pantheon's spiral staircase.
There's a lot of blood. And Mickey Mouse ears.
After a few hours,he grows sleepy.His head sinks against my shoulder. I don't dare move.The sun is coming up,and the sky is pink and orange and makes me think of sherbet.I siff his hair. Not out of weirdness.It's just...there.
He must have woken earlier than I thought,because it smells shower-fresh. Clean. Healthy.Mmm.I doze in and out of a peaceful dream,and the next thing I know,the captain's voice is crackling over the airplane.We're here.
I'm home.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
He never talked about material things, like buying a house or a car or even new shoes. His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind. He read late into the night, often long after I’d fallen asleep, plowing through history and biographies and Toni Morrison, too. He read several newspapers daily, cover to cover. He kept tabs on the latest book reviews, the American League standings, and what the South Side aldermen were up to. He could speak with equal passion about the Polish elections and which movies Roger Ebert had panned and why.
”
”
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
What are you? Who are you? I thought you shared Artemis's memories. How can you be so stupid?"
Orion was unperturbed. "I share everything. Memories and movies are as real as each other to me. You, Peter Pan, the Loch Ness Monster, me. It's all real, maybe.
”
”
Eoin Colfer (The Atlantis Complex (Artemis Fowl #7))
“
You know that place between sleep and awake? That place where you still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you ... Peter Pan. That's where I'll be waiting." Tink from Hook
”
”
Hook the movie
“
Cook yourself some bacon or something.” “Pfft. Rather have the beer.” “Not while I’m standing here,” I said. “You’re underage.” She puffed air up against her fallen bangs, making them flutter. “Aren’t you, like, a thief or something?” “Or something, sometimes.” “But you won’t let me have a beer,” she said. “Nope. A man’s got to have standards.” Melanie pulled a sealed package of turkey bacon out of the fridge and reached for a frying pan. “Ooh,” she said sarcastically, “the code of the criminal underworld, just like in the movies. Like you won’t shoot women or kids, right?” I shrugged. “I try not to shoot anybody if I can help it. If I’m put in a position where I have to, though, their gender or their age doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it.” “And let me guess, you never steal from your boss?” “Depends.” “Depends?” she said. “On how much of an asshole he is.” “That happen a lot?” “Working for assholes?” I said. “You have no idea.” She laughed.
”
”
Craig Schaefer (Redemption Song (Daniel Faust, #2))
“
It is a shame when a Christian gives an unqualified approval to the positive messages in The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Little Miss Sunshine, but doesn’t even stop to wonder if the crassness in the storytelling method in both those films undermines them. It’s a bigger shame when Christians pan a movie like In the Bedroom because it is about a revenge murder, and miss the profound theme in the piece about the need to forgive.
”
”
Douglas M. Beaumont (The Message Behind the Movie: How to Engage with a Film Without Disengaging Your Faith)
“
As a survey of what the overall consensus looks like on a movie, Rotten Tomatoes has a purpose. But a lot of readers see that number and take it as some kind of objective measurement of quality, not what it really is: a calculation of the overall number of critics who recommend something. And everywhere you look online, you can see numbers that supposedly represent reader reviews and customer grades. People rate the toothpaste they buy on Amazon and pan the restaurant that served them cold soup on Yelp. Netflix users can rate the films they watch with a thumbs down, a thumbs up, or two thumbs for something they absolutely love. All of this bears Gene and Roger's influence: they democratized criticism, turned it into mass entertainment, and brought it to millions of people all over the country for decades. And now the internet has given everyone an outlet to practice it in public, for better or for worse.
”
”
Matt Singer (Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever)
“
Crosby, Sinatra, and Martin were three major male singing stars whose careers overlapped, with the emergence of their stardom in that order. They had distinctly different approaches to the cinematic frame. Sinatra’s entrance, even if he seemed cool, indifferent, and casual, was tantamount to kicking the door down. Crosby slipped in from the side, all low-key and “Don’t mind me.” Martin, perhaps as a result of having to stand around for years while Jerry Lewis swung on the chandelier, always established himself as outside the frame: “I’m just hangin’ loose out here and watchin’ the action.” These three men were all really good actors—great actors, even—but their singing defined them, and in that race Bing was the pacesetter. Although both Sinatra and Martin are probably better known today, and Sinatra is the gold standard of male singers, his role model was always Crosby. Nobody could upstage Crosby, partly because he was so good at appearing not to care. When he was present, everyone else seemed to be sweating it out.*18 Crosby never lost it. He presented himself to any audience as if the very idea weren’t in his brain pan.
”
”
Jeanine Basinger (The Movie Musical!)
“
You can’t create a new life with the person you once were. It is like creating a Batman movie with Peter Pan as the hero.
”
”
Daniel Marques (The 88 Secret Codes of the Power Elite: The Complete Truth about Making Money with the Law of Attraction and Creating Miracles in Life that is Being Hidden from You with Mind Programming)
“
In fact, there were no movie stars in view, though Finian himself was a talent star, one of the last of the Golden Age, Fred Astaire. He hadn’t filmed a musical since Silk Stockings, in 1957, but it was a frustrating return, for Astaire felt Coppola had no feeling for the form. And Coppola didn’t—not the form of musical Astaire was used to making. For instance, some of the show’s many dance sequences became choreography by other means—a festive picnic with a tug-of-war and other contests for “If This Isn’t Love.” Then, too, Astaire was working with his old RKO assistant, Hermes Pan, who was suddenly fired from the picture, offending Astaire’s deep-rooted sense of loyalty—to his profession, to the great songwriters who had made songs on him, and to his colleagues. Still, the movie flows along nicely with a likable confidence, not easy to bring off when the plot takes in a pot of gold that grants wishes.
”
”
Ethan Mordden (When Broadway Went to Hollywood)
“
Our beliefs drive the bets we make: which brands of cars better retain their value, whether critics knew what they were talking about when they panned a movie we are thinking about seeing, how our employees will behave if we let them work from home.
”
”
Annie Duke (Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts)
“
Relief came in the form of a “tab” show—an hour long (see Warner Bros. Footlight Parade for examples) musical review that played in the movie theatres with the film. It was a traveling show and Pan, whose job it was to create the dances as well as perform them, got good experience in the fine art of “doubling in brass.
”
”
John C. Tibbetts (American Classic Screen Interviews)
“
Memories and movies are as real as each other to me. You, Peter Pan, the Loch Ness monster, me. It’s all real. Maybe.
”
”
Eoin Colfer (The Atlantis Complex (Artemis Fowl #7))
“
Streamline Your Focus Instead of Jumping From Unfinished Project to Unfinished Project
Although it seems contradictory, anxiety-related perfectionism can cause people to persist too long on some tasks and leave other projects unfinished. Perfectionists who are intolerant of uncertainty often jump from project to project. They might start multiple business plans, grant proposals, job applications, movie scripts, stand-up routines, craft projects, or novels, and not finish any of them. They may sour quickly on an idea when their self-doubt starts to creep in rather than stay with the idea long enough to realistically judge it’s potential.
If you bounce from idea to idea, it could very well be because it’s hard for you to tolerate your uncertainty about whether the idea you’re working on is going to pan out. If you have a habit of not finishing things, you’re likely to be better off sticking with a project and finishing it, instead of jumping to another project when you start to feel unsure.
To help you be less tempted to jump around, reduce your exposure to excessive information and alternatives.
”
”
Alice Boyes (The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points)
“
As I reflect back on all of the years of our family’s life together, what I remember best is not the mountains of dirty dishes and pots and pans and socks left on the floor and piles of laundry. I reflect instead on precious times shared with Clay, the kids, and those we welcomed into our home—snuggling on the couch together, nursing babies and rocking them to sleep, sharing movies and huge bowls of popcorn, comforting children after a nightmare, and all those heartfelt kisses and cards that said “I love you!
”
”
Sally Clarkson (The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming)