“
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“
She felt like Lady in Lady and the Tramp, one of Hanna's favorite movies as a kid. When Jim Dear and Darling had a new baby, they kicked Lady to the curb. Except Hanna didn't even have a scruffy bad-boy stray she could run off with because her supposed boyfriend was going to be hundreds of miles away soaking up sunshine on a nude beach with a skank.
”
”
Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Secrets: A Pretty Little Liars Collection (Pretty Little Liars, #4.5))
“
I think maybe I’m just a victim of movies, y’know? That I have some completely unrealistic notion of what a relationship can be.”
— The original script of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
”
”
Charlie Kaufman.
“
I change the channel to another movie. An old one, but new to me. And, ironically, a thin, gorgeous blonde—Meg Ryan, maybe—rides her bike on a country road. She smiles like she has no cares in the world. Like no one ever judges her. Like her life is perfect. Wind through her hair and sunshine on her face. The only thing missing are the rainbows and butterflies and cartoon birds singing on her shoulder.
Maybe I should grab my bike and try to catch up with Mom, Mike, and the kids. They can't be going very fast. I would love to feel like that, even if it's just for a second—free and peaceful and normal.
Suddenly, there's a truck. It can't be headed toward Meg Ryan. Could it? Yes. Oh my God. No! Meg Ryan just got hit by that truck.
Figures. See what happens when you exercise?
”
”
K.A. Barson (45 Pounds (More or Less))
“
Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials — they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think — rather than letting you figure it out on your own," said Arkin, who has been acting since the 1960s and won the supporting actor Oscar for "Little Miss Sunshine." "Ben treats the audience like adults. He doesn't shove you into endless close-ups, and the music doesn't tell you what's going to happen next, which is something I hate in American movies.
”
”
Alan Arkin (An Improvised Life: A Memoir: Library Edition)
“
I can tell you think being a romantic is a bad thing, and while I freely admit to wanting to find a man to spend the rest of my life with, I do know the world isn’t always sunshine and roses. Most of the time it’s overcast skies and poison ivy. That’s why I read the books and watch the movies I do. If the only way I can experience romance is through my imagination and fairy-tale books and the weddings of English Royalty, I’m going to do it.
”
”
Susan Stoker (Rescuing Rayne (Delta Force Heroes, #1))
“
A horror movie. The kind you’re not supposed to watch before you go to sleep at night. Despite
”
”
Paige McKenzie (The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl, #2))
“
But it was one of those songs that just had a feel to it, like along with the notes, you also received a healthy dose of summery sunshine that kissed your shoulders as you
walked downtown at dusk.
”
”
Lynn Painter (Better than the Movies (Better than the Movies, #1))
“
Cannes was to blame, he told himself defensively. It was a city made for the indulgence of the senses, all ease and sunshine and provocative flesh.
“What had he seen, what had he learned? He had seen all kinds of movies, good and bad, mostly bad. He had been plunged into a carnival, a delirium of film. In the halls, on the terraces, on the beach, at the parties, the art or industry or whatever it deserved to be called in these few days was exposed at its essence. The whole thing was there—the artists and pseudo-artists, the businessmen, the con men, the buyers and sellers, the peddlers, the whores, the pornographers, critics, hangers-on, the year’s heroes, the year’s failures. And then the distillation of what it was all about, a film of Bergman's and one of Bunuel's, pure and devastating.
”
”
Irwin Shaw (Evening in Byzantium)
“
I am having a hard time concentrating on the romantic drama, even though this is one of my favorite movies.
Maybe Travis is more than just a friend...
No.
No, that’s silly.
He’s my best friend!
I wouldn’t want to ruin this friendship...by taking it to a romantic level, I conclude.
”
”
Sunshine Rodgers (The Characters Within)
“
California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two.
Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic.
Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told.
You see, I'd never actually been to Florida before the war, much less Miami. I was a newspaper reporter from Chicago before the war and had never even seen the ocean until I was flying over the Pacific for the Air Corp. There wasn't much time for admiring the waves when Japanese Zeroes were trying to shoot you out of the sky and bury you at the bottom of that deep blue sea.
It was because of my friend Pete that I knew so much about Miami. Florida was his home, so when we both got leave in '42 I followed him to the warm waters of Miami to see what all the fuss was about. It would be easy to say that I skipped Chicago for Miami after the war ended because Pete and I were such good pals and I'd had such a great time there on leave. But in truth I decided to stay on in Miami because of Veronica Lake.
I'd better explain that. Veronica Lake never knew she was the reason I came back with Pete to Miami after the war. But she had been there in '42 while Pete and I were enjoying the sand, sun, and the sweet kisses of more than a few love-starved girls desperate to remember what it felt like to have a man's arm around them — not to mention a few other sensations. Lake had been there promoting war bonds on Florida's first radio station, WQAM. It was a big outdoor event and Pete and I were among those listening with relish to Lake's sultry voice as she urged everyone to pitch-in for our boys overseas.
We were in those dark early days of the war at the time, and the outcome was very much in question. Lake's appearance at the event was a morale booster for civilians and servicemen alike. She was standing behind a microphone that sat on a table draped in the American flag. I'd never seen a Hollywood star up-close and though I liked the movies as much as any other guy, I had always attributed most of what I saw on-screen to smoke and mirrors. I doubted I'd be impressed seeing a star off-screen. A girl was a girl, after all, and there were loads of real dolls in Miami, as I'd already discovered. Boy, was I wrong." - Where Flamingos Fly
”
”
Bobby Underwood (Where Flamingos Fly (Nostalgic Crime #2))
“
All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?
Once there, they discover that sunshine isn’t enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don’t know what to do with their time. They haven’t the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn’t any ocean where most of them came from, but after you’ve seen one wave, you’ve seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a “holocaust of flame,” as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash.
Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. Their daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.
”
”
Nathanael West
“
A nice lady opens the door on Peachtree Street and she’s got one of those faces that feels familiar like you’ve known her all her life. She buys a bunch of colored paper for her daughter who likes to draw. You ask how old her daughter is and she is four years younger than you. You ask what school she went to and she says that she kept her at home. You see her daughter peek at you from the hall and you think that maybe she was born wrong too. You figure she has never left this house. And you want to get her out of it.
The next week you ask the woman if you can visit with her daughter. She brings you down the hall and into the sun room where her daughter is drawing. She’s quiet for a while and then she looks up and tells you she likes to sit in here and watch the birds outside. The light falls in on her hair like beach sunshine in the movies. There’s plants growing all around her. It’s like a jungle and you sit in the wicker chair across from her and wait for her to talk to you, like she’s a magical animal behind all the vines and leaves. All you can figure is that she’s just very, very shy. You think maybe you would have been this way too if you didn’t grow up in such a loud family.
”
”
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips (Sleepovers: Stories)
“
Great writers and my mom never used food as an object. Instead it was a medium, a catalyst to mend hearts, to break down barriers, to build relationships. Mom's cooking fed body and soul. She used to quip, "If the food is good, there's no need to talk about the weather." That was my mantra for years---food as meal and conversation, a total experience.
I leaned my forehead against the glass and thought again about Emma and the arrowroot. Mom had highlighted it in my sophomore English class. "Jane Fairfax knew it was given with a selfish heart. Emma didn't care about Jane, she just wanted to appear benevolent."
"That girl was stupid. She was poor and should've accepted the gift." The football team had hooted for their spokesman.
"That girl's name was Jane Fairfax, and motivation always matters." Mom's glare seared them.
I tried to remember the rest of the lesson, but couldn't. I think she assigned a paper, and the football team stopped chuckling.
Another memory flashed before my eyes. It was from that same spring; Mom was baking a cake to take to a neighbor who'd had a knee replacement.
"We don't have enough chocolate." I shut the cabinet door.
"We're making an orange cake, not chocolate."
"Chocolate is so much better."
"Then we're lucky it's not for you. Mrs. Conner is sad and she hurts and it's spring. The orange cake will not only show we care, it'll bring sunshine and spring to her dinner tonight. She needs that."
"It's just a cake."
"It's never just a cake, Lizzy."
I remembered the end of that lesson: I rolled my eyes----Mom loathed that----and received dish duty. But it turned out okay; the batter was excellent.
I shoved the movie reel of scenes from my head. They didn't fit in my world. Food was the object. Arrowroot was arrowroot. Cake was cake. And if it was made with artisan dark chocolate and vanilla harvested by unicorns, all the better. People would crave it, order it, and pay for it. Food wasn't a metaphor---it was the commodity---and to couch it in other terms was fatuous. The one who prepared it best won.
”
”
Katherine Reay (Lizzy and Jane)
“
the small garden was just a slip of earth on the side of the house, bit it seemed like its own universe. The sweet, sharp scent of hundreds of flowers greeted her. Even in the night their colors sang it was a thick, lush blanket of color- luxurious purple and electric blue and sunshine yellow and cheery red. It was like a movie version of an enchanted harden, gorgeous, vivid, and too beautiful to be real. She could dive into the purple of the violets and live there.
”
”
Anne Ursu (Breadcrumbs)
“
Burns continued to work, doing a routine with Carol Channing that was short-lived. For a time it seemed that the old sentiment was to be proved true: that Burns without Gracie was a stale act indeed. Then he got a role in a movie, intended for his friend Jack Benny, who became ill and had to decline it. He won an Academy Award as Best Supporting actor in The Sunshine Boys, a 1975 release. His performance in the title role of the 1977 film Oh, God put to rest the “no-talent” argument.
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
He glanced down at the movie poster art that had been skillfully airbrushed not his custom apron, thanks to Lani's interesting assistant, Dre. He had thought the eclectic collection clever and a fitting contribution to the tone the show was trying to strike, being set in a cupcakery, and featuring its whimsical owner.
'Whimsical she might be,' Baxter thought, 'but when it comes to smoldering sensuality, even Marilyn Monroe in her movie star prime doesn't hold a candle to little Miss Snow White.' He'd been attracted to her drive, her focus, her steady demeanor and steadier hand. She'd been steel wrapped in sunshine, a dependable beacon of light he could rely on and trust in his always loud, rushed, chaotic world.
Now he looked at her, with the warm, buttery, bakery sweet scents filling the air, accented with rich, dark, chocolate undertones... and all he could think about was adding the taste of her to the mix.
”
”
Donna Kauffman (Sugar Rush (Cupcake Club #1))
“
Unlike in the movies, the weather seemed indifferent to his personal predicament and refused dramatic contribution. It was a rather pleasant day, in fact.
”
”
Mandy Ashcraft (Small Orange Fruit)
“
California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told.
”
”
Bobby Underwood (Where Flamingos Fly (Nostalgic Crime #2))
“
So he repeated the same made-up crap he had lived on then, about bubblegum machines and Cadillacs with fins, and endless sunshine, and drive-in movies and waitresses on roller skates, and cheeseburgers and cold Coca-Cola in green glass bottles, and baseball on AM radio, out of Kansas City, static and all.
”
”
Lee Child (Night School (Jack Reacher, #21))
“
Grateful for a chance to brush my teeth after sleeping on a train last night, I spend a little extra time on my oral hygiene before plopping back down on the couch and streaming Across the Universe. It’s one of my favorite movies, and tonight is all about comfort. There’s something about Jim Sturgess singing Strawberry Fields Forever that makes my relationship problems fade away.
”
”
Heather Garvin (Crossing the Line: A Grumpy Sunshine Romance)
“
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)
“
The best. I thought men like you only existed in fairy tales, books, and movies, but here you are,” I said, placing a kiss on his chest over his heart. “You’re kind, genuine, you speak from the heart, and you love with everything you have, and somehow you want to share that love with me. I am the luckiest man on this planet. So, on the days when things look bleak, and humanity has let you down again, know that I’ll be here to show you that this life is worth living and there is always sunshine waiting to brighten your world after those dark clouds pass.” “Josh,
”
”
Aimee Nicole Walker (Dyed and Gone to Heaven (Curl Up and Dye Mysteries, #3))
“
Dreams are the canvases of the soul, movies of forgotten thoughts...and that nightmares were the echoes of the heart's pain
”
”
Monica Lu (Damned and Beautiful (Beautifully Healing #1))
“
A real loser is someone who's so afraid of not winning he doesn't even try.
”
”
Grandpa, Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
“
Are you talking about me, or are you talking about yourself?”
“You must have me confused with someone else, Sunshine.”
“I don’t think I do. You don’t fool me anymore, Alex Volkov. I’ve been thinking about it, the way you noticed all those things about me. How you agreed to look after me, even though you could’ve said no. How you stayed in to watch those movies with me when you thought I was upset and let me stay the night in your bed after I fell asleep. And I’ve come to a conclusion. You want the world to think you have no heart when in reality, you have a multilayered one: a heart of gold encased in a heart of ice. And the one thing all hearts of gold have in common? They crave love.”
“What did I tell you about romanticizing me?”
“It’s not romanticizing if it’s true.
”
”
Ana Huang (Twisted Love (Twisted, #1))
“
Let me tell you about my favorite day of the month, properly dubbed my A.D.I.B. (stands for All Day In Bed). On that designated day, I will buy candy, chocolates and order any fast food meal of my choosing. I will then spend the rest of my A.D.I.B. in my pajamas on the couch, watching a movie marathon. I’ll watch the corniest chick flicks, the most romantic of dramas, and the cheesiest comedies. I will also pour myself a relaxing hot bubble bath with aromatherapy beads while reading a magazine. That entire day, I am off the grid and completely unplugged!
”
”
Sunshine Rodgers (Be The Sunshine)
“
You must have me confused with someone else, Sunshine.
I don't think I do. Ava stood on tiptoes so she could whisper in my ear. "You don't fool me anymore, Alex Volkov. I've been thinking about it, the way you noticed all those things about me. How you agreed to look after me, even though you could've said no. How you stayed in to watch those movies with me when you thought I was upset and let me stay the night in your bed after I fell asleep. And I've come to a conclusion. You want the world to think you have no heart when it reality, you have a multilayered one: a heart of gold encased in a heart of ice. And the one thing all hearts of gold have in common? They crave love.
”
”
Ana Huang (Twisted Love (Twisted, #1))
“
Standing in the bright sunshine, I realized that I had never come back to any of my photographs. I had become an absurd American movie, cutting quickly from one image to another, but never stopping to focus on one thing. For the first time I had looped back—and here was my old photograph, wrapped in a blue blanket while the gulls spiraled overhead.
”
”
Mark Lee (The Canal House (Harvest Book))
“
Then there’s southern California. Maybe the shadow of Hollywood tints truth and fiction beyond recognition. Maybe crooked executives believe they can do what they please since a continent separates them from Wall Street. Maybe the sunshine triggers a criminal giddiness. Or maybe it’s just coincidence. But a disproportionate number of the financial scandals of the last generation have blossomed in the land of the lotus eaters. The collapse of Lincoln Savings & Loan, Charles Keating’s bank, cost taxpayers $3.4 billion; other California S&L failures cost tens of billions more. Barry Minkow came from the San Fernando Valley to fleece bankers and investors of several million dollars while he was still a teenager. And movie accounting is notoriously corrupt.
”
”
Alex Berenson (The Number)
“
People always say that they like New York because it’s exactly how it is in the movies. I love London for the opposite reason. No movie I’ve seen captures London’s variety: the serene elegance of the white stucco terraces; the improbable red-brick Christmas cake of the Royal Albert Hall, golden Albert glinting in the sunshine; horses galloping on Rotten Row; crazy swimmers diving into the Serpentine; and, near Hyde Park Corner, where I turned back for home, gardens with luscious herbaceous borders and pergolas of roses, planted and tended for no other reason than to give people colour to look at.
”
”
Kate Eberlen (Miss You)
“
People always say that they like New York because it’s exactly how it is in the movies. I love London for the opposite reason. No movie I e seen captures London’s variety: the serene elegance of the white stucco terraces; the improbable red-brick Christmas cake of the Royal Albert Hall, golden Albert glinting in the sunshine; horses galloping on Rotten Row; crazy swimmers diving into the Serpentine; and, near Hyde Park Corner, where I turned back for hom, gardens with luscious herbaceous borders and pergolas of roses, planted and tended for no other reason than to give people colour to look at.
”
”
Kate Eberlen (Miss You)
“
The longing for improvement and the fear of waste and worse - it is a pattern still with us, and maybe it speaks to the medium's essential marriage of light and dark, or as Mary Pickford put it in her autobiography (published in 1955), Sunshine and Shadow. Light and dark were the elements of film, and they had their chemistry in film's emulsion. They had a moral meaning, too. But not everyone appreciated that prospect, or credited how it might make your fortune.
”
”
David Thomson (The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies)