Ballroom dancing: it's a wonderful thing at so many levels because you've got to follow the rules. They used to call those rules etiquette once upon a time, but you don't really have that any more.
Once upon a time there was a saucer pie. A saucer pie is one that is baked in a saucer instead of a pan; and if you have never seen one, I hope you will before you are a hundred years old.
Once upon a time, a girl lived in a sandcastle, making monsters to send through a hole in the sky.
On 'Swingtown,' I think that's when I was able to blend the character-slash-leading lady roles, and that's what I'm doing on 'Once Upon a Time' as well. She's a leading lady, but she's also this character.
Once upon a time when there was no time.
Once upon a time is now.
Had I been brighter, the ladies been gentler, the Scotch been weaker, had the gods been kinder, had the dice been hotter, this could have been a one-sentence story: Once upon a time I lived happily ever after.
Once upon a time there were three little foxes Who didn't wear stockings, and they didn't wear sockses, But they all had handkerchiefs to blow their noses, And they kept their handkerchiefs in cardboard boxes.
Ninety percent of the time, you're going to hear no. It took me seven years to make 'Once Upon a Time. . . When We Were Colored. ' Nobody wanted to see the movie made. I got the movie made.
Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.
Basically, when I hear it now, I don't recognize myself directly in a lot of cases. I was expecting more menace. And the fact that it didn't seem menacing at first troubled me. Then I thought, What the hey, you know? I'm 66 years old, and I could just crack open a beer and listen to it, and it doesn't trouble me that it doesn't kill. Once upon a time, it probably would have.
Once upon a time, fairy tales were AWESOME!
What actresses do today when they appear on the screen is what they did once upon a time for getting to appear on the screen.
Once upon a time. . . What time are we upon and where do I belong?
When you take a child who's hollering like hell, sit him on your knee, and say "once upon a time", you stop him hollering. As long as you go on telling him a story, he will listen. Novelists who neglect this fundamental effect do so at their peril. They become what is known as the experimental novelist, and an experimental novel is not really a novel at all.
Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time. But now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time.
McGough: I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've caught poetry. Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don't worry, sir - I used to suffer from short stories. McGough: Really? When? Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time. . .
The difference between a fairy tale and a sea tale? A fairy tale starts with "Once upon a time". A sea tale starts with " This ain't no $hit"!
Just as once upon a time you could make the experience of religion or nature a great metaphor, so now it is with love. It's just not the kind of thing you can put at the center of a work of literature and have it really reveal us to ourselves.
When I used Claudia [Cardinale] for example, in Once Upon a Time in the West, she represented the birth of American matriarchy. Because women had enormous weight in America.
