Terry Southern Quotations

Peter Beard is one of those people I've known a long time. We have an affinity. We share certain values.

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

I think the degree of alienation and despair is more universal.

You can't do the end of the world in a conventionally dramatic way or Boy Meets Girl way.

For a director and a producer to be named on the writing credits is practically unheard of.

It's often the case with directors that they don't like to share credit, which is the case of Stanley. He would prefer just A Film By Stanley Kubrick including music and everything.

Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States.

The Loved One has been the most underrated film I've worked on.

When I finally made it to the set, I spent a lot of time doing damage control on The Magic Christian.

When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.

I met The Beatles and Stones at the same time, because Michael Cooper was doing several of their album covers.

In the case of The Loved One, I was hired to collaborate on an updated version of the book.

It was a good experience working with Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda.

It's frustrating not to have more control over your material.

Writing on a contract for a major studio you get the very best.

After Strangelove I also started work on an adaptation of The Collector.

Grossing Out dealt with the western nations selling arms to the Third World and exploiting these countries.

I met Claxton on the set of The Cincinnati Kid.

In that sense, film is superior, but the difficulty is your lack of control as a writer.

Sometimes we would be staked out in the middle of the river, several barges tied together. So we could party.

David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.

Blue Movie was based on an idea that Stanley Kubrick had. Somebody came by one day with some porn footage.

I like to work at night.

I learned not to care ... and to write for an imaginary reader whose tastes were similar to my own.

An angel has no memory.

There is no power on earth that can loosen a man's grip on his own throat

An absolutely devastating ridicule of all that is false, primitive, and vicious in current American life: the abuses of power, hero worship, aimless violence, materialistic obsession, intolerance, and every form of hypocrisy.

I don't know why, but I always feel a kind of necessity to write things that are beyond acceptance, that are too offensive or something. For people to read them and say, Ha-ha-ha, very funny. No, we can't print that.

I'm not interested in attacking, I'm interested in astonishing.