Paul Schneider Quotes

Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.

You have to avoid caricature, at the one end of the spectrum, and sentimentality, at the other; which is not to say that such characters shouldn't be funny part of the time, or that their actions shouldn't evoke genuine feeling.

Pixar make kids' movies, but there are jokes in there for adults, and it never gets too sentimental.

Sentimental is not bad, but it's probably the most likely to go awry. It's the hardest to do and not have it end up being 'Forrest Gump' or something. Maudlin - I just don't want it to be maudlin.

I get very tired of books that feel emotionally empty. I would much rather have writers err on the side of being overly sentimental than not. I think that the perfect balance is a story that moves you without being maudlin, but I don't enjoy books that are empty of emotion and there's no connection to the characters.

Music can make you go from sadness to an immense sadness. There is a limit; if you go too far, it becomes schmaltzy.

Emotion will always win over coolness and cleverness. It's when a scene works emotionally and it's cool and clever, then it's great. That's what you want.

I knew that the principle objective of my film was to be a sentimental or an emotional study. What I did was kind of like subterfuge.

I love animated films when they are good, because they do bring a lot of emotion and heart that's very difficult to get in a live action film.

What I react against in other people's work, as a filmgoer, is when I see something in a movie that I feel is supposed to make me feel emotional, but I don't believe the filmmaker shares that emotion. They just think the audience will. And I think you can feel that separation. So any time I find myself writing something that I don't really respond to, but I'm telling myself, 'Oh yes, but the audience is going to like this,' then I know I'm on the wrong track and I just throw it out.

Most of us start from that position of irony now and what I wanted to do - really felt like I had to do if I was going to write another novel - was move towards something like sincerity.

beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.

I'm supposed to make people cry, but not by manipulating.

When did "sentimental" become a pejorative barb? I do not at all share the notion that a piece of music, or a poem, or a film that bypasses the brain and aims straight for the heart . . . should automatically be heaped with scorn. I think it is symptomatic of a sad and dangerous impoverishment of spirit.

Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.

If you do not learn to hate you will never be lonely enough to love easily nor will you always be brave, although it does not grow any easier. Do not pretend to convenient beliefs, even when they are righteous; you will never be able to defend your city while shouting.

If you laugh, think, and cry; that's a full day.

Most people here don't have a wide emotional range. It's just the type of people astronauts are, they're required to be level.

Take love when love is given, But never think to find it A sure escape from sorrow Or a complete repose.

If everything is happy go-lucky all the time, you don't know when you're experiencing joy and feeling life at its finest moments. You have to suffer a little.

Lasse [Hallström] is really good at emotionally engaging an audience without hitting them over the face with it.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

It's important for me to work with a strong director because I know I can go to some really deep places, I just need direction on how to get there.

It seems like the big difference between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love, with having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.

I like to get dark sometimes and then come back out into the light.