"Much of the havoc he wreaks is caused by his lofty indifference to convention. At worst, he is heartless. More often, he's merely thoughtless. At his best, he is consumed by an obsessive logic that impels him into a physically and visually harmonious relationship with the world around him. His forte is construction rather than demolition." ~Andrew Sarris, "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: the American Talking Film History and Memory, 1927-1949"
"Buster Keaton, on the other hand, will be around forever, because it's unlikely that human beings will ever go out-of-date the way special effects do. Keaton running and clambering onto a moving Civil War train in The General is infinitely more exciting than Christian Slater jumping from a helicopter onto a speeding locomotive in Broken Arrow because what Keaton does is real, and the camera captures and preserves his feats for posterity. In Broken Arrow we never see Slater (or the stuntman, for that matter) leaping from the helicopter to the train. Instead there are several cuts, and we must suspend our disbelief and assume that the feat has been accomplished. Which means that it's no feat at all."
"Lost Action Hero: Supercop" By Anthony Puccinelli
"He was by his whole style and nature so much the most deeply "silent" of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of key as a yell. In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of response is the juggler’s effortless, uninterested face."
"Keaton’s face ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was irreducibly funny; he improved matters by topping it off with a deadly horizontal hat, as flat and thin as a phonograph record."
"No other comedian could do as much with the dead-pan. He used this great, sad, motionless face to suggest various related things; a one track mind near the track’s end of pure insanity; mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances; how dead a human being can get and still be alive; an awe-inspiring sort of patience and power to endure, proper to granite but uncanny in flesh and blood."
"Confronted by Love, he was not as dead-pan as he was cracked up to be, either; there was an odd, abrupt motion of his head which suggested a horse nipping at a sugar lump."
"Beneath his lack of emotion, he was also uninsistantly sardonic; deep below that, giving a disturbing tension and grandeur to the foolishness, for those who sensed it, in his comedy there was a freezing whisper not of pathos but of melancholia."
"Perhaps because ‘dry’ comedy is so much more rare and odd than ‘dry’ wit, there are people that never much cared for Keaton. Those who do cannot care mildly."
James Agee
Life Magazine September 5th 1949
"The screen was just a white sheet. They had this flickering machine. That was the first time I saw this angel with a white face and these beautiful eyes. I knew this was something special. It was the first time I saw (Keaton). He wore a flat pancake of a hat, and I just couldn't believe the man's grace."
"I think that if Keaton lived in the year 2000, he would still be sensational. I think he would have worked just as well, maybe even better, in color. It would have been another instrument. He was inventive. He used whatever was available."
--Believing in Make Believe:
An Interview with Mel Brooks
"With his dark, sensitive looks, his face in repose evoking years of quiet contemplation, he resembled a mixture of Buddhist monk and fashion model. He offered the ideal face & acting style for motion pictures, proving less is more. He would become a master of knowing when to do nothing at all."
--Marion Meade "Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase"
"I just really admired what they were doing in the old days. When I would watch Buster Keaton, I would say 'What he did--he looks almost like me!' We have the same kind of style."
"I just want that one day, when I retire, that people still remember me like they remember Buster. I really want someone to respect me the way they respect Buster."
--Jackie Chan interview, pt. 4
"Watch Buster Keaton, in the 19 short films and 11 silent features he made between 1920 and 1928. Watch his beautiful, compact body as it pirouettes or pretzels in tortured permutations or, even more elegantly, stands in repose as everything goes crazy around it. Watch his mind as it contemplates a hostile universe whose violent whims Buster understands, withstands and, miraculously, tames. Watch his camera taking his picture (Keaton directed or supervised all his best films); it is as cool as the star it captured in its glass. "
"The medium was still in its infancy; comics were pioneering the craft of making people laugh at moving images. Keaton, it turns out, knew it all--intuitively. His body, honed by vaudeville pratfalls, was a splendid contraption."
~~Richard Corliss, Time Magazine
"To tell you the truth I'm on dangerous ground here because, except in his short films which were hilarious, I don't think all that much of Charlie Chaplin. He was too sentimental, too manipulative, for my taste, but even so at his best he was pretty nearly peerless. Pretty nearly - but not quite because Buster Keaton, though an entirely different kind of comedian, was certainly his equal."
"Keaton was a superb clown, a brilliant acrobat and a master of comic timing and what, for me, gives him the edge over Chaplin is that he never sought our pity. He may, like Chaplin, have represented the little fellow: continually beset by a cruel world, but unlike Chaplin he never made a fuss about it. "
"Maybe the trouble is that modern comics strive too hard to be sophisticated and knowing. What we've lost over the years is innocence and, as Keaton and company prove, innocence is an integral part of comedy."
~~Barry Norman
"The guy is very, very cool."
"Buster Keaton: The Man Who Fell to Earth"
"When the Damfino has finally disappeared in the swirling water, all that is left is Buster's porkpie hat floating away. As the boat sinks befgore your eyes, it is impossible to avoid Buster's terrible logic: This boat was meant to be sunk, and now it is sinking." ~ Tom Dardis, "Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down"