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Pull Quote – What Is It & How You Can Make Use Of It

A pull quote, or lift-out quote as it is also known, is a quote from within a larger piece of text that is somewhat emphasized and “pulled out”  and placed in an isolated area within the document to highlight a particular quote or section of writing.

These can serve as a teaser to entice potential readers to dive deeper into the story.

A pull quote element can also be used to highlight the impactful statements made by characters in a book, enabling the reader to form a better connection with these protagonists.

Sometimes, they’re used as part of the design element to make the book a little more aesthetically pleasing and emphatic.

Article writers also use these to make their articles more exciting and alluring to read.

Using a pull quote is one of the most effective strategies out of all the tools in a layout designer’s arsenal . It enhances the reading experience, and it doesn’t stop the flow of reading the way an image does.

A pull quote also makes for a beautiful design subtly while maintaining the emphasis on the text.

Table of Contents

Why Should You Use a Pull Quote?

A pull quote can help readers tie-in certain events leading up to the position in the book they are currently reading. They are an excellent tool for bringing a reader back to a past situation or scene that occurred earlier in the story.

Overall, a decorative quotes can help create a more exciting experience for the reader and help him or her figure out the main content.

Usually, a these quotes are presented in a slightly different format style to the rest of the text in the book. For example, many lift quotes are formatted in italics, a different font size, and type, or offset by quotation marks.

Putting decorative accents or borders on quotes also adds a creative visual appeal to the overall layout of the book interior. The pull quote visual also emphasizes the whole gist of the article, book, sentence, or news.

How to Use a Pull Quote

The basic rule to follow when incorporating quotes in the design of your book is to keep them short. A long pull quote can visually distract readers from the story. Moreover, typography for shorter quotes is easier to execute than lengthier ones.

To avoid reader confusion, keep the text wrap formatting of all pull quote uniform and consistent throughout the interior graphic design of the book.

Here are more tips to properly make use of pull quotes:

• Utilize Hanging Punctuation

Using hanging punctuation makes your pull quote more organized and orderly. It also gives your article or books a sort of illusion of consistent edges for your text.

• Keep Sufficient Space Between the Adjoining Text

Adjust the text wrap properly to tune up the space between the pull quote and the body text.

• Don’t Place the Pull Quote Close to Other Elements

You can place your pull quote at the top of the page, but make sure it doesn’t compete with other design elements such as headlines and subheadings.

• Don’t Use Varying Font and Text Styles

Keep all your pull quotes monochromatic. If you’re going to use specific font size, color, and style, use the same design to all the pull quotes you’re going to use. This tip mostly applies to articles.

• Place the Pull Quote Away from the Quoted Text

Don’t put your pull quote immediately before or after the text you highlighted. Give a significant distance between the two to avoid your readers from seeing double.

• Make Sure They Stand Out

It’s not essential, but it’s highly suggested that you use a different typeface for your pull quote to stand out. This is to properly separate it from the rest of the text in your article or book body.

You can also try crossing the pull quote to two columns of text, aligning it to the left or right, or utilizing oversized quotation marks.

• Keep Them Short and Visually Attractive

Don’t make your quotes too long. Quotes with more than five lines are harder to read and not very visually appealing. You can do this by lowering the font size or editing the word count.

• Don’t Give Too Much Away

One of the primary purposes of a pull quote is to tease the readers into reading more of the story. So make sure yours are brief and to the point without revealing too much. Just include an essential theme of the story or a single thought.

• Choose Correctly

Don’t just use any snippet of text as your pull quote. Make sure the quotes you use have flair, thought-provoking, and dramatic. That will make your readers want to know more about your story.

Example Uses of Pull Quotes

Here are some examples of beautiful quotes that may serve as inspiration for your interior book design.

This example has an image on one page and a pull quote on the next. This is a great design that entices readers to turn the page for more. Aside from that, the text also complements the minimalist aesthetic of the photo.

Not to mention, taking up a whole page for a single pull quote will undoubtedly get the attention of your readers–and it also makes a bold statement!

The large, highlighted text might seem a bit daunting, but the content makes up for it. If you want to use this kind of design, make sure your pull quote is thought-provoking and exciting.

This quote design is also an excellent strategy to make use of a blank space in your book.

Another excellent example of a pull quote and an image taking up the whole spread of a page. This aesthetic is most commonly seen in magazines and articles.

The font greatly complemented the image, and the size was properly formatted to fit the page, leaving an ample amount of space in the corners.

Aside from the image and layout, people are first attracted to the text content when they read quotes. This sentence provides insights into several key points that will be described in more depth in the book.

That’s why it’s crucial to choose every pull quote you will use. Use powerful words and sentences that will make your readers turn the pages even more.

This pull quote is taken directly from the previous page to emphasize a prior statement. It’s a clever tactic so the readers can properly follow the trend of the story.

Some of the words were in a different font color to emphasize the point, but the whole design is still fresh and visually appealing.

In this example, the quote poses and highlights a question that grabs the readers’ attention. It’s designed in a way where the quote is still in the same text style, but in a slightly larger font.

It catches the readers’ attention without being too loud. It’s an apt design for articles or stories telling a serious topic.

This book opted for text blocks in their design, and the quote emulated the same trend by just being slightly bigger in font compared to the rest of the body.

Beyond Print

The longstanding history of pull-quotes in print has bled over to electronic content as well. Online blog articles also utilize quotes in their content to entice readers, as well as give a refreshing visual appeal to an otherwise boring long-form content.

Many people create quotes like this using an app and other desire to build them directly into their design. Here are a few beautiful examples of online pull quotes found in online blog articles that are all designed in HTML and CSS.

The black theme serves as a great contrast to the red and white text color. The quote is also enveloped in a modern quote bubble.

The purple theme shows that the post is leaning towards a female audience, and the bright color vividly expresses uniqueness.

This minimalistic text design suits no-fuss readers who don’t want flamboyance in their content. Whenever you publish a post, think of your target audience and their design preferences.

Some say that brown is a garish color, but it certainly gave this pull quote a touch of simple elegance.

More on Quotes

The Audiopedia shared that a pull quote is a key phrase, quotation, or excerpt that has been pulled from an article and used as a graphic element, serving to entice readers into the article or to highlight a key topic. It is typically placed in a larger or distinctive typeface and on the same page.

Give the same amount of effort to your pull quote design as you would any graphic elements in your post or page design, and you’re on the right track!

Have you come across some examples of great lift-out quotes you’d like to share? Post your link below!

About the Author

CJ grew up admiring books. His family owned a small bookstore throughout his early childhood, and he would spend weekends flipping through book after book, always sure to read the ones that looked the most interesting. Not much has changed since then, except now some of those interesting books he picks off the shelf were designed by his company!

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Weird Pull Quote Theater: ‘Black Rock’

Steve greene.

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And now, it’s time for another installment of Weird Pull Quote Theater !

From :   The Village Voice , Vol. LVIII No. 20

Movie :  “Black Rock”

Criticwire Average :  B-  (out of 23 critics)

Pull Quote :  “ ‘Deliverance!’   for girls!”

Author :   Kate Erbland ,  Film School Rejects

Original Quote, in Context :  “Aselton has ceded writing duties to her husband, Mark Duplass, and the pair have made what will likely be referred to as ‘ Deliverance  for girls’ for many years to come.”

Why It’s Weird : Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Pull Quote Theater! This is Exhibit A in why pull quotes and qualifying adverbs don’t mix, a stylistic choice that  seems to be the basis for these context-stripping snippets. 

What’s more, this pull quote is playing into the very trap that Erbland’s review warns against. The very next line in her piece states that “Black Rock” is “a twisty little horror outing that perhaps shares more with The Freebie than might be obvious from first blush.” As with many of these Weird Pull Quotes, Erbland provides plenty of alternatives in her review that would be far more appealing (and less oversimplifying): “surprising sophomore effort,” “brand new genre,” “style and fair.” “Economical and thought-provoking” probably doesn’t fill up seats, but that’s certainly a more ringing endorsement, no? Heck, if you’re going to remove key context, why not take the first word out of “somewhat awe-inspiring?”

Related Stories The 13 Best New Indie Horror Movies You Should Watch This Halloween What to Rent/Buy on Blu-Ray This Week: Criterion Release of ‘The Devil’s Backbone,’ Survival Thriller ‘Black Rock’ and More

And how exactly is having the same content as “Deliverance” a selling point? Last time I heard the trailer, there wasn’t any banjo music. So by referencing that other title, you’re conjuring up, well, the only other scene from that film that most people remember. So…if you loved that, you’ll love it with women! (?) If you’re going to use a critic’s half-comparison as a selling point, maybe it’s not the best choice to invoke a film that features a brutal sexual assault. The more I think about it, this is more than just a weird way to sell a movie.

(Thanks to Reverse Shot for the tip.)

This has been another installment of  Weird Pull Quote Theater !

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Fun With Pull Quotes: The Part Of Peter Travers’ ‘Gone Girl’ Review You *Didn’t* See In The Ads

Embarrassing confession time: at one point in my life, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was my favorite film critic. I think I finally turned on him when I started seeing his four-star review of that middle-brow awards wank Atonement blown up to poster size and placed in theater lobbies. See, he’s become what we call a “quote whore,” a guy who seems to work blurby bits into his reviews in order to see his name in marketing material, to the point of reusing the same mostly-meaningless soundbites  over and over again. The site  eFilmCritic  even named their “Whore of the Year” award after him.

Travers shows up again in this week’s TV spots for David Fincher’s Gone Girl , calling it “the date-night movie of the decade.” Which, I suppose, was his innovative new twist on “ the perfect date movie ,” a phrase that, again, has its own eFilmCritic page dedicated to its overuse in movie marketing. (“A perfect date movie to critics should be as recognizable as porno to Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart.”)

Though this time, the best part of the pull-quote is actually reading the entire thing. Here’s the Rolling Stone review from whence it came:

Gone Girl is the date-night movie of the decade for couples who dream of destroying one another .

Now, the use of the quote in the trailer comes right after “Amy lost a lot of blood in there,” so it’s clear Gone Girl isn’t actually trying to sell itself as a great date movie. And David Fincher is famously hands-on when it comes to trailers and marketing for his movies. Could it be that Fincher has finally found the perfect use for a Peter Travers pull quote – as satire? Brilliant.

• Sven Lennartz
• Jun 12, 2008

Block Quotes and Pull Quotes: Examples and Good Practices

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About The Author

Sven is the co-founder and former CEO of Smashing Magazine. He writes at his Conterest Blog where he focuses on blogs, content strategy, writing and publishing … More about Sven ↬

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This post presents creative examples and best practices for design of pull quotes . We’ve tried to identify some common solutions and interesting approaches you may want to use or develop further in your projects.

Aren’t all these quotes the same?

No. First of all: quote ≠ block quote ≠ pull quote. Pull quotes are short excerpts from the presented text. They are used to pull a text passage out of the reader’s flow and give it a more dominant position in the post or the article.

Just like a pull quote blockquote (actually block quotations ) are also set off from the main text as a distinct paragraph or block. However, they refer to some external citation which isn’t already mentioned in the article. Block quotations are usually placed within the reader’s flow.

Finally, “normal” quotes cite the content found in some other sources and are included to support the content rather than dominate over it.

Blockquote vs. Q vs. Cite

According to HTML specifications, there are three elements which are supposed to semantically mark up quotations, namely <blockquote> , <q> and <cite> . Although all intended to markup quotes, they should be used in different contexts. So when should you use what? HTML Dog provides a nice and compact overview of these elements:

blockquote is a large quotation. The content of a blockquote element must include block-level elements such as headings, lists, paragraphs or div’s. This element can also have an optional attribute cite that specifies the location (in the form of a URI) where the quote has come from. Example:

q is a small quotation. The content of this element is an in-line quote. Modern browsers know how to interpret <q> which is why you can style quotations using this HTML-elements via CSS. Example:

Although <q> is almost never used, it has some useful properties. For instance, you can specify the appearance of quotes within the <q> -element via CSS. That’s reasonable as different languages use different quotation marks for the same purpose. For instance, these ones:

Modern browsers support this way of styling. Of course, Internet Explorer (even in its 8th version) doesn’t support it although it knows <q> pretty well. In particular, since some problems with encoding of quotes can appear sometimes it’s useful to provide numeric values (see below).

According to standards you can even specify the appearance of quotation marks depending on the browser’s language of the user. This is how a W3C-example looks like:

As lovely as they may be, pull quotes have inherent problems in the way they are placed in the middle of HTML content. To a visual, CSSenabled browser all might seem hunky-dory, but to those browsers that are not CSS-abled and fall back on the plain HTML or to screen readers for visually impaired users, the pull quotes will appear slap bang in the middle of the main content. A quote suddenly appearing between two paragraphs is clearly out of place and will confusingly break the flow.

If you are using pull-quotes, it is wise to provide a little extra information for users who would stumble on this problem. In the XHTMLyou can provide a message, hidden from view with CSS that reads something like “Start of pull-quote” before the quote and then “endquote” after it.You could even have a link similar to the “skip navigation” link, which would offer the user the ability to skip the pull-quote and continue to the main content.

cite defines an in-line citation or reference to another source. Example:

Summing up: for large quotes use blockquote , for small quotes use q and for references to another sources cite should be used. In practice, usually only blockquote and q are used.

Gallery of Pull Quotes and Citations

Quotes, braces, lines, dialogue boxes, balloons — there are some paths a designer can take to create a beautiful and memorable quote . Design solutions vary in colors, forms, and sizes. Different techniques produce different result: However, it is important that it is clear to the visitors that the quote is a quote. Otherwise, it becomes easy to keep track on the content.

Keep in mind: pull quotes shouldn’t be used too often, they shouldn’t be too large, and they shouldn’t be included for the wrong purposes. In most cases an ordinary article should have at most 1-2 pull quotes. Otherwise, they lose their appeal, and the article becomes harder to scan.

Take a look at the example above. 99designs uses a block quotation to emphasize what the site is about. However, the text put in the quotes actually isn’t a quotation. We do not know why quotation mark is used in this case. We do know, though, that they shouldn’t be used in this context.

1. Simple indentation

In most cases simple indentation is enough. In this case, the structure of the content makes clear that the intended content is taken out from the main content flow. However, using this approach you need to make sure you have a very intuitive typographic and visual hierarchy and the indentation won’t be misunderstood. Often italics are used to indicate that the content is a quote, and sometimes quotation is centered. The latter technique, however, is used quite rarely.

2. Quotes and indentation

Another standard approach for design of pull quotes is to use the quote itself as a visual element to clearly indicate what the text passage is supposed to stand for. This technique is by far the most popular one and there is a good reason behind it: it unambiguously communicates the meaning of the text block. Surprisingly, the quote visuals are almost always placed on the left of the quote . You may try to experiment with quote on the right, or at the bottom of the passage.

3. Lines and indentation

Standard, most usual and recommended way of designing blockquotes.

4. Quotations highlighted with a color

Frequently designers use indentation together with a variation of color which is applied to the quote. Usually if the layout is dark quotes are presented in colors which are darker than the main content. And if the layout is light the quote is presented in lighter colors. If quotes need to be strongly emphasized vibrant colors are used. For modest highlighting usually slight variations of main colors suffices to indicate the difference between the main content and cited text.

5. Pull Quotes

Actually we know it from print where quotes-neighbours are supposed to emphasize some important message or interview excerpts. Pull quotes are placed not within, but next to the content. Such quotes are usually short and don’t provide any additional information as they can also be found in the article. In Web the technique is seen rather rarely, but it has a charm of its own and — if used properly and for the right purposes — may strongly support the content. To clearly separate the “neighbours” from the main content designers often use lines or a large amount of whitespace.

It is important to understand that in such cases pull quotes break the usual content flow which may make it harder for the readers to actually follow the argumentation of the article. In some cases it is more effective to avoid quotes (e.g. if a complex matter is described) while in other cases quotes can quicken and simplify the understanding (e.g. the main statement in the interview).

Quotes-neighbours are usually placed on the right side of the content in order to not break the reader’s flow and remain passive.

6. Creative solutions

Sometimes designers come up with creative solutions one actually wouldn’t expect from such an element as a quote. Here are some of them. Hopefully, they’ll help you to come up with further interesting ideas for the design of pull quotes.

7. Quotations as a standalone element

Often quotations are used and designed not inside an article, but as a standalone design element which is given the dominant position in the design. This is often the case in testimonials where companies present quotes from their customers and clients to confirm the quality they actually promise. In such cases quotations are usually big, bold and clearly visible.

In testimonials quotes are sometimes “rotated” meaning that among 5-7 testimonials only one is displayed at once.

8. Bonus: Footnotes

In books and scientific documents citations are often provided with a footnote reference to the original document. In the Web, where references are commonly just linked to, this technique has never managed to become popular, however footnotes aren’t difficult to achieve with pure CSS.

For instance, if you’d like to cite an excerpt from a book, instead of providing the corresponding title and page number you can simply refer to a footnote below the article. Thus, you can avoid overloading your article with too many references. Footnotes, hence, can make it easier for your readers to read your article and provide details “on-demand” — only when they are needed.

Sometimes footnotes are also used by authors to provide some remarks to the article (similar to books). However, it is not always reasonable to use footnotes for links. The Web is a dynamic medium and links are extremely powerful - you don’t have to send your visitors to the footer of the page first to be able to follow a given link.

Take a look at the following example. Naz Hamid uses both a blockquote (label 2 in the image above) and a footnote in his articles. The reference to the footnote and the footnote itself are interconnected: visitors can click on the reference and jump to the footnote. And in the footnote the “return”-icon allows the user to jump from the footnote to the place in the article where it is referred to. The author uses the footnotes to provide a personal remark on what has been mentioned in the article (labels 1 and 2).

With footnotes you can offer your visitors some traditional, classic layout feeling without overwhelming them with long references to citations you provide.

• Simple CSS Blockquotes and Pullquotes
• Automatic Pull-quotes with Behaviour and CSS
• Snazzy Pullquotes for Your Blog
• How To Use Pull-quotes

Further references

You may also want to take a look at the posts:

• Web Design Elements: Examples And Best Practices
• Mind Your En And Em Dashes: Typographic Etiquette
• Grid-Based Design: Six Creative Column Techniques at Smashing Magazine

Look at the “Escaping Boundaries” section (fourth from the top). Pull-quotes are an example of a design element that presents an opportunity to break out of your established visual flow.

The older version of Andy Rutledge’s Design View used interesting pull-quotes that broke the visual flow of the column.

Doing this places greater emphasis on the pull-quotes than if they were kept within the content of the column.

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How to Use Pull Quotes to Add Visual Flare to Articles

Pull quotes offer excerpted text as a visual ornament to your design

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What to Know

• Select dramatic, thought-provoking, or enticing excerpts to use as pull quotes. Make it a quick bite of information.
• Keep the length to no more than five lines; set it apart with a different typeface, rules, or a shaded box.
• Adjust the text wrap to fine-tune the space between the body and the quote, and use a hanging quotation for an arty look.

This article explains how to take a small text excerpt, known as a pull quote, and use it to break up the page and make it more appealing and enticing for the reader.

How to Use Pull Quotes

A pull quote is a small selection of text in an article or a book pulled out and quoted in a different format. Used to attract attention, especially in long articles, a pull quote may be framed by rule lines, placed within the article, span multiple columns, or be placed in an empty column near the article. Pull quotes provide a teaser that entices the reader into the story.

Here's how to follow best practices for using pull quotes.

Choose Appropriate Snippets for Pull Quotes

The role of pull quotes is to not only quote the text but also to use text that pulls the reader into the article. Select dramatic, thought-provoking, or enticing excerpts to use as pull quotes.

Keep Pull Quotes Brief and to the Point

Make the pull quote a quick bite of information—a teaser. Don't give away too much of the story in a pull quote. Include only a single thought or theme in each quote.

Keep Pull Quotes Visually Short

Keep the length of pull quotes to no more than five lines. Pull quotes that are long are hard to read and harder to make attractive. Try editing the number of words or using a smaller font.

Make Pull Quotes Stand Apart From the Accompanying Text

Set the pull quote apart by using a different typeface, setting it off by rules or in a shaded box. Try using oversized quotation marks or aligning it to the right or having it cross two columns of text.

Do Not Place the Pull Quote Too Close to the Text Quoted

Placing a pull quote too close to the spot where it appears in the article (such as immediately before or after it) confuses some readers, who see double when they skim the text.

Be Consistent With the Style Used for Pull Quotes

Use the same fonts, font size, graphic elements, and color for all pull quotes in an article.

Keep Pull Quotes Away From Competing Design Elements

Don't place a pull quote too close to the top of the page or where it will compete with headlines, subheadings, or other graphics on the page.

Keep Adequate Space Between Pull Quotes and Adjoining Text

Fine-tune the space between the body text and the pull quote by adjusting the text wrap.

Use Hanging Punctuation With Pull Quotes

Hanging punctuation creates the illusion of a uniform edge for the text, with the punctuation outside the margins. It makes the pull quote look orderly.

Other Names for Poll Quotes

Pull quotes are sometimes referred to as  callouts , but not all callouts are pull quotes. Pull quotes guide the reader. Other teasers or visual signposts that draw readers into an article include  kickers or eyebrows, decks , and subheads.

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Tips for Better Pull Quotes

An often overlooked yet powerful tool in the design of publications, annual reports, brochures, online articles, or blog posts is the humble pull quote. When done thoughtfully and strategically, pull quotes help engage readers with your content, and ensure what you have to say isn’t skipped over in our fast-paced, information-drenched world.

When should they be used?

Long articles: Pull quotes are especially useful in guiding readers through hefty portions of text where focus can easily be lost. Use at least 1 pull quote for every 2 pages of printed text, or an article online that requires a lot of scrolling.

When visuals are lacking: Sometimes imagery is scarce for a particular piece of content or story – either your budget is tight, or the ideas presented don’t easily lend themselves for photography or illustration. Pull quotes are a great option in this scenario, granted you can bring out the most interesting sentences, and highlight them with unique typography.

How long should they be?

There’s no hard or fast rules, but usually 1-2 sentences are most effective. Think about pull quotes as if they were sound bites or mini movie trailers – they highlight the most interesting parts of a message that either tease someone to read more, or help encapsulate the main point in a manner that’s quickly and easily digested.

Think about pull quotes as if they were sound bites or mini movie trailers

Driving Social Engagement

Pull quotes are often overlooked on the web, but can be especially useful in increasing readership when paired with social media. This can be done through prompting a user to share the quote through a specific call-to-action. Articles are shared via Facebook or Twitter everyday, and many of them are posted with a quote that someone pulls from the article themselves – why not give them one at the outset and increase the chances your article will be seen?

Hopefully these tips get you thinking about how to use pull quotes in your next publication, blog post, or news story. It’s important to note that pull quotes should be used wisely and not too often, otherwise they lose their impact! But carefully crafted and thought-through, they are powerful tools for effective, engaging communication.

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100 Best Movie quotes of all time

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1. Batman Begins (2005)

PG-13 | 140 min | Action, Crime, Drama

After witnessing his parents' death, Bruce learns the art of fighting to confront injustice. When he returns to Gotham as Batman, he must stop a secret society that intends to destroy the city.

Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Christian Bale , Michael Caine , Ken Watanabe , Liam Neeson

Votes: 1,574,089 | Gross: $206.85M

“Why Do We Fall, Sir? So that We Can Learn To Pick Ourselves Up.” — Alfred Pennyworth

2. The Dark Knight (2008)

PG-13 | 152 min | Action, Crime, Drama

When the menace known as the Joker wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham, Batman must accept one of the greatest psychological and physical tests of his ability to fight injustice.

Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Christian Bale , Heath Ledger , Aaron Eckhart , Michael Caine

Votes: 2,862,325 | Gross: $534.86M

“You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain” — Harvey Dent

3. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

R | 99 min | Crime, Thriller

When a simple jewelry heist goes horribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant.

Director: Quentin Tarantino | Stars: Harvey Keitel , Tim Roth , Michael Madsen , Chris Penn

Votes: 1,085,359 | Gross: $2.83M

“Are You Gonna Bark All Day, Little Doggy? Or Are You Gonna Bite?” — Mr. Blonde (Vic vega)

4. Django Unchained (2012)

R | 165 min | Drama, Western

With the help of a German bounty-hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi.

Director: Quentin Tarantino | Stars: Jamie Foxx , Christoph Waltz , Leonardo DiCaprio , Kerry Washington

Votes: 1,688,964 | Gross: $162.81M

“Mister Candie, Normally I Would Say "Auf Wiedersehen," But Since What "Auf Wiedersehen" Actually Means Is "'Till I See You Again", And Since I Never Wish To See You Again, To You, Sir, I Say Goodbye!” — Dr. King Schultz

5. Death Proof (2007)

R | 127 min | Action, Thriller

Two separate sets of voluptuous women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his "death proof" cars to execute his murderous plans.

Director: Quentin Tarantino | Stars: Kurt Russell , Zoë Bell , Rosario Dawson , Vanessa Ferlito

Votes: 313,116

“Hey, Pam, Remember When I Said This Car Was Death Proof? Well, That Wasn't A Lie. This Car Is 100% Death Proof. Only To Get The Benefit Of It, Honey, You REALLY Need To Be Sitting In My Seat.” — "Stuntman Mike" McKay

6. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

“If You shoot Me In A Dream, You Better Wake Up And Apologise.” — Mr. White (Lawrence Dimmick)

7. Kung Fu Panda (2008)

PG | 92 min | Animation, Action, Adventure

To everyone's surprise, including his own, Po, an overweight, clumsy panda, is chosen as protector of the Valley of Peace. His suitability will soon be tested as the valley's arch-enemy is on his way.

Directors: Mark Osborne , John Stevenson | Stars: Jack Black , Ian McShane , Angelina Jolie , Dustin Hoffman

Votes: 519,272 | Gross: $215.43M

“You Are Too Concerned With What Was And What Will Be. There Is A Saying: Yesterday Is History, Tomorrow Is A Mystery, But Today Is A Gift. That Is Why It Is Called The Present.” — Master Oogway

8. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

“If You Beat On Him Enough, He Could Tell You He Started The Goddam Chicago Fire, But That DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE IT FUCKIN' SO!” — Eddie Cabot ("Nice Guy Eddie")

9. The Dark Knight (2008)

“If You're Good At Something, Never Do It For Free.” — "The Joker"

10. Snatch (2000)

R | 102 min | Comedy, Crime

Unscrupulous boxing promoters, violent bookmakers, a Russian gangster, incompetent amateur robbers and supposedly Jewish jewelers fight to track down a priceless stolen diamond.

Director: Guy Ritchie | Stars: Jason Statham , Brad Pitt , Stephen Graham , Vinnie Jones

Votes: 908,117 | Gross: $30.33M

“You Should Never Underestimate The Predictability Of Stupidity.” — "Bullet-Tooth" Tony

11. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

PG-13 | 103 min | Comedy

A popular high school student, admired by his peers, decides to take a day off from school and goes to extreme lengths to pull it off, to the chagrin of his Dean, who'll do anything to stop him.

Director: John Hughes | Stars: Matthew Broderick , Alan Ruck , Mia Sara , Jeffrey Jones

Votes: 385,536 | Gross: $70.14M

“Life Moves Pretty Fast. If You Don't Stop And Look Around Once In A while, You Could Miss It.” — Ferris Bueller

12. Se7en (1995)

R | 127 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.

Director: David Fincher | Stars: Morgan Freeman , Brad Pitt , Kevin Spacey , Andrew Kevin Walker

Votes: 1,792,942 | Gross: $100.13M

“Ernest Hemingway Once Wrote, "The World Is A Fine Place And Worth Fighting For." I Agree With The Second Part.” — Detective William R. Somerset

13. The Usual Suspects (1995)

R | 106 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

The sole survivor of a pier shoot-out tells the story of how a notorious criminal influenced the events that began with five criminals meeting in a seemingly random police lineup.

Director: Bryan Singer | Stars: Kevin Spacey , Gabriel Byrne , Chazz Palminteri , Stephen Baldwin

Votes: 1,142,734 | Gross: $23.34M

“The Greatest Trick The Devil Ever Pulled Was Convincing The World He Didn't Exist.” — Roger "Verbal" Kint

14. They Live (1988)

R | 94 min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

They influence our decisions without us knowing it. They numb our senses without us feeling it. They control our lives without us realizing it. They live.

Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Roddy Piper , Keith David , Meg Foster , George 'Buck' Flower

Votes: 144,976 | Gross: $13.01M

“I Came Here To Kick Ass And Chew Bubblegum. And I'm All Out Of Bubblegum.” — John Nada

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Using Pull Quotes, Display Quotes, Block Quotes, and Epigraphs in Your Writing

A lot of writers are confused about the different types of quote styles and how to use them in their manuscript. Here’s a quick primer on the difference between pull quotes, display quotes, block quotes, and epigraphs:

A pull quote is an excerpt that is pulled from the text and displayed on the page with special graphics that draw attention to it. Typically the font is italicized and much larger than the style used in the text. Sometimes a box is placed around the quote. Pull quotes make readers take notice of a key point the author is making by repeating the words loud and clear, and they also add visual interest to the page. Overdoing pull quotes can make an author seem pompous. In a pull quote, the author is quoting himself.

A display quote is a quotation important enough to be made into a sidebar. It has the same formatting characteristics as a pull quote (large type, italics, optional box surrounding the words), but in this case the author is quoting someone else, not himself. Another difference is that a pull quote is a repeat of something in the text, while a display quote never repeats: it’s a one-shot deal. Include the person’s name at the bottom of the quote, with a dash (not a hyphen) in front of the name.

A block quote  is a long quotation (four or more lines) inserted into the text but set off from it by three things: (1) indentation, (2) a different typeface (such as italics or a small-sized font), and (3) a blank line-space above and below the quotation. The entire quote (not just the first line) is indented by five spaces on the left, and also by five spaces on the right. In a block quote, the author is quoting someone else. Include the name of the author (and who she is, if that’s not obvious) in the text sentence directly before the quote (not at the end of the quote).

An epigraph is a quotation placed at the very beginning of a chapter, either in italics or a small-sized typeface. An epigraph may also be placed at the beginning of a book before the chapters start. In an epigraph, the author is quoting someone else. Put the person’s name beneath the quotation with a dash (not a hyphen) in front. Do not use an epigraph beneath a subheading. For consistency’s sake, if one chapter opens with an epigraph, all chapters must open with an epigraph.

If you keep these differences in mind, you’ll avoid the formatting mistakes many writers make when they go to insert a pull quote, display quote, block quote, or epigraph into their manuscript. For another (more serious) kind of quotation error, see my article Authors: Beware the Fake-Quotation Trap!

Jessi Rita Hoffman … book editing by an industry professional

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The Top 50 Famous Movie Quotes (How Many Do You Know?)

Updated: March 11, 2022

Published: September 21, 2018

Movies can be an escape from reality or an inspiration. We often relate to the characters, situations they’re presented with, or words they speak. And many famous quotes have originated from movies.

Whether you’re a film buff or enjoy watching the occasional movie on Netflix, memorable movie phrases have likely made their way into your everyday vocabulary, presentations, or water cooler talk. Check out the movie quotes below and test your memory to see how many you remember.

Famous Movie Quotes

1. “May the Force be with you.” - Star Wars, 1977

2. “There's no place like home.” - The Wizard of Oz, 1939

3. “I'm the king of the world!” - Titanic, 1997

4. “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” - Dead Poets Society, 1989

5. “Elementary, my dear Watson.” - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1939

6. “It's alive! It's alive!” - Frankenstein, 1931

7. “My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.” - Forrest Gump, 1994

8. “I'll be back.” - The Terminator, 1984

9. “You're gonna need a bigger boat.” - Jaws, 1975

10. “Here's looking at you, kid.” - Casablanca, 1942

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11. “My precious.” - The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers, 2002

12. “Houston, we have a problem.” - Apollo 13, 1995

13. “There's no crying in baseball!” - A League of Their Own, 1992

14. “E.T. phone home.” - E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982

15. “You can't handle the truth!” - A Few Good Men, 1992

16. “A martini. Shaken, not stirred.” - Goldfinger, 1964

17. “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!” - Auntie Mame, 1958

18. “If you build it, he will come.” - Field of Dreams, 1989

19. “The stuff that dreams are made of.” - The Maltese Falcon, 1941

20. “Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

21. “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” - The Godfather Part II, 1974

22. “I am your father.” - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, 1980

23. “Just keep swimming.” -Finding Nemo, 2003

24. “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” - The Pride of the Yankees, 1942

25. “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” - The Help, 2011

26. “What we've got here is failure to communicate.” - Cool Hand Luke, 1967

27. “Hasta la vista, baby.” - Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991

28. “You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.” - On the Waterfront, 1954

29. "Bond. James Bond." - Dr. No, 1962

30. “You talking to me?” - Taxi Driver, 1976

31. “Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.” - Back to the Future, 1985

32. “That'll do, pig. That'll do.” - Babe, 1995

33. “I'm walking here! I'm walking here!” - Midnight Cowboy, 1969

34. "It was beauty killed the beast." - King Kong, 1933

35. “Stella! Hey, Stella!” - A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951

36. "As if!" - Clueless, 1995

37. “Here's Johnny!” - The Shining, 1980

38. “Rosebud.” - Citizen Kane, 1941

39. “I'll have what she's having.” - When Harry Met Sally, 1989

40. “Inconceivable!” - The Princess Bride, 1987

41. “All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.” - Sunset Boulevard, 1950

42. “Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.” - All About Eve, 1950

43. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” - Dirty Dancing, 1987

44. “Well, nobody's perfect.” - Some Like it Hot, 1959

45. “Snap out of it!” - Moonstruck, 1987

46. “You had me at ‘hello.’" - Jerry Maguire, 1996

47. "They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!" - Braveheart, 1995

48. “To infinity and beyond!” - Toy Story, 1995

49. “You’re killin’ me, Smalls.” - The Sandlot, 1993

50. “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.” - The Wizard of Oz, 1939

Looking for some more quotes? Check out these motivational quotes to start your day, awesome quotes for every situation , brainy quotes that will make you sound smart , and uplifting entrepreneur quotes .

Don't forget to share this post!

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‘Shogun’ Episode 7 Recap: Death Wish

As the walls close in around Lord Toranaga, his vassals and family look for ways out.

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By Sean T. Collins

Season 1, Episode 7: ‘A Stick of Time’

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Few cinematic genres have had as fruitful a conversation with one another as the samurai film and the western, so it’s only fitting to use an epigraph from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” to sum up the central conflict in this week’s episode.

It begins in full “print the legend mode,” as the director Takeshi Fukunaga brings us a dreamlike flashback depicting the aftermath of Lord Toranaga’s first victory in battle, achieved before he’d have been bar mitzvah’d. The rogue warrior whose forces he defeats calls for the young Toranaga himself to serve as his second in the ritual of seppuku. An overhead shot shows us the lad preparing to strike the deathblow from a point of view that feels a million miles away, less a bird’s-eye view than a god’s.

But looks can be deceiving. Ask Saeki (Eita Okuno), Toranaga’s estranged half brother, upon whose support the lord of Edo is counting if his fight against Lady Ochiba and the Regents is to be successful. He’s happy to tell Toranaga’s adoring son, Nagakado, that his pops severed the head of the rebel with a single stroke at the tender age of 12. No such thing occurred — Toranaga hacked away nine times like a miniature ax murderer before finally decapitating the man.

But Saeki isn’t doing this to flatter his older brother. He’s doing it to taunt him. He knows Toranaga’s sense of honor will make hearing exaggerated accounts of his exploits uncomfortable. And he knows that by elevating Nagakado’s image of his father, he can send it crashing back down all the more easily. So he tosses in the tale of how young Toranaga soiled himself when he was sent away as a hostage. That’s not the kind of story that makes it into the legendarium.

It’s also not the kind of story you tell if you plan to ally yourself with the boy who fouled his breeches. Indeed, despite initially giving every appearance to the contrary, Saeki has no intention of taking up his older brother’s cause. He announces that he has accepted Lord Ishido’s offer of membership on the Council of Regents, and has been dispatched to summon Toranaga to his impeachment and execution. It takes everything the lord has left in him to prevent his Nagakado from blindly accepting Ishido’s order to commit seppuku over the cannon attack he ordered in Episode 4.

The Toranaga of decades past wasn’t fit to deliver the coup de grâce to the rebel lord, and the Toranaga of today refuses to do the same to his country. He could defend himself, issue the order for Crimson Sky, make war on Osaka, declare himself shogun — but he won’t. “No one has the right to tear the realm apart,” he tells his assembled vassals as he agrees to surrender to the Council.

There’s just one problem with Toranaga’s pacifism: It’s not just his own execution to which he’s marching. His household, family and many of his vassals will be expected to follow him in death. “Behold the great warlord,” Blackthorne sneers when he understands what’s happening. “Brilliant master of trickery, who tricked his own loyal vassals into a noiseless smothering.” He turns to those lords and warriors and addresses them in their own language, “You’re all dead.” (He spares a parting expletive for the Crimson Sky plan.)

Blackthorne isn’t the only person sworn to Toranaga’s service who’d prefer not to go gently into that good night. Elsewhere in the episode, Yabushige makes a failed attempt to broker a separate peace; Ishido sends his emissary’s severed head back in a box.

But one character take matters even more directly into his own hands. Acting in concert with the courtesan Kiku, Nagakado leads a small band of assassins into the teahouse where Saeki is enjoying Kiku’s services. But the fight that ensues ends in disaster when Nagakado slips and falls before his own attempt to chop off an enemy’s head, braining himself on a rock in the teahouse’s garden. Even Saeki, who’d betrayed Nagakado’s father and was seconds away from dying by the youth’s sword, feels the sting of the loss. “Where is the beauty in this?” he says, staring down at the corpse.

Perhaps he might ask Buntaro and Mariko. This unhappy couple is morbid in the extreme. Buntaro wants nothing more than to kill Blackthorne for warming his wife’s icy heart in a way he never could. Buntaro came dangerously close to taking out Blackthorne when he interrupted a friendly sparring session between the Anjin and Lord Yabushige, but opted to submit the issue to Toranaga later as a formal request.

(For his part, Yabushige remains the show’s wild card, as apt to ostentatiously bathe in the presence of Saeki’s soldiers as he is to boil one of Blackthorne’s men alive. You never know with this guy!)

Even as her husband aims to punish her lover, Mariko desires above all to kill herself, finally following the rest of her family. Like Buntaro, she puts this request directly before her liege lord.

Toranaga denies them both, going so far as to slap the ceremonial blade from Mariko’s hand. It’s enough to make you wonder if Kiku’s madame, Gin (Yuko Miyamoto), is right when she notes that it’s out of character for a seasoned warlord like Toranaga to leave his forces so vulnerable to those of his brother. If he truly planned to meekly submit to his own death, why would he be so forcefully averse to Mariko’s?

Maybe there’s more to the future than meets the eye. That’s certainly Gin’s belief. After Mariko brokers a brief meeting between the madame and Lord Toranaga in exchange for Kiku’s services with Saeki, Gin uses her time to ask for the construction of a special red-light district in Toranaga’s burgeoning city, Edo. When he protests that he has no future to offer her, she doesn’t buy it. Surely the great Toranaga has one last legend in him.

An earlier version of the article misidentified the name of the courtesan character. She is called Kiku, not Fuji.

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World Central Kitchen, led by a humanitarian chef, has fed crisis zones for years

Rachel Treisman

José Andrés unloads food packages delivered by World Central Kitchen in Kherson, Ukraine in November 2022. Efrem Lukatsky/AP hide caption

José Andrés unloads food packages delivered by World Central Kitchen in Kherson, Ukraine in November 2022.

The aid group World Central Kitchen said Tuesday that it is pausing its efforts to feed Palestinians in Gaza after seven of its workers were killed by an Israeli strike.

The nonprofit said in a statement that the team was hit while leaving a warehouse where they had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza by sea, a route that World Central Kitchen helped establish just last month.

The organization said the convoy had been traveling in a deconflicted zone, in armored cars branded with their logo and after coordinating movements with Israel's military, which now says it will conduct an investigation of the incident "at the highest levels." Erin Gore, the CEO of World Central Kitchen, called it a "targeted attack."

"This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war," she said.

The U.S.-based organization, which was founded by celebrity chef José Andrés and his wife Patricia in 2010, delivers food to people on the front lines of natural and humanitarian disasters around the world.

Middle East crisis — explained

World central kitchen pauses gaza aid, as netanyahu acknowledges an 'unintended hit'.

It has been working on the ground in the region since Hamas - led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government. Israeli's military response in Gaza has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, displaced an estimated 1.7 million and left the territory on the brink of famine .

WCK said last week that it had provided some 42 million meals to people in Gaza over 175 days, calling the situation there "the most dire we've ever seen or experienced in our 15 year history."

"More and more people, particularly children, are dying of starvation," Gore and Andrés said in a joint statement. "We've known for months that famine is imminent and the situation is getting worse."

With food scarce and malnutrition rising , international experts have warned that some 30% of Gaza's population is already facing " catastrophic" levels of hunger and that northern Gaza could officially see famine anytime between now and May.

World Central Kitchen isn't the only organization working to get food into Gaza, where aid deliveries are severely limited by Israeli border restrictions, logistical challenges and ongoing fighting. But it has played a major role in the humanitarian response, including sending two shipments of hundreds of tons of food to Gaza by sea.

The second such shipment — stocked with shelf-stable items like rice, canned vegetables and proteins, as well as dates in honor of Ramadan — left Cyprus on Saturday . The Cypriot foreign ministry said Tuesday that some 100 tons of aid had been unloaded in Gaza before WCK announced it was pausing its operations in the enclave, and the remaining 240 tons would be returned to Cyprus, according to the Associated Press .

Just days ago, WCK vowed it would keep pushing to get food into Gaza "until there is substantial aid getting in via land." Now those plans are up in the air — it says it will be "making decisions about the future of our work soon."

In the meantime, here's what else to know about the organization:

WCK brings food to the front lines of disasters

People line up for food prepared by a World Central Kitchen worker in Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine in December 2022. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP hide caption

People line up for food prepared by a World Central Kitchen worker in Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine in December 2022.

Andrés is a Spanish-American chef known for his numerous U.S. restaurants, PBS travel series and humanitarian work of over a decade.

He traveled to Haiti after it was struck by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010, cooking for displaced people in camps — an ad hoc relief mission that helped set World Central Kitchen in motion.

WCK has responded to a long list of natural and man-made disasters ever since, working with local partners on the ground.

It served more than 20,000 meals in the Houston area after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and another 3.7 million across Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria , for which Andrés was named the James Beard humanitarian of the year in 2018 (seven years after winning its "outstanding chef" award).

He told NPR that same year that he expected to see more chefs getting involved in disaster response, since "restaurant people" are particularly well suited to managing chaos.

NPR's Book of the Day

In 'the world central kitchen cookbook,' josé andrés collects recipes with impact.

"What we are very good at is understanding the problem and adapting," he said. "And so a problem becomes an opportunity ... We're practical. We're efficient. And we can do it quicker, faster and better than anybody."

The organization has grown substantially over the years and expanded its efforts to focus not only on disaster response but resilience training and longer-term community needs, including opening a culinary school in Port-au-Prince several years after the earthquake that started it.

It has fed survivors of major wildfires in California and Hawaii , federal workers in D.C. during the 2019 government shutdown and stranded cruise ship passengers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic , throughout which it provided food for front line workers and other vulnerable groups in the U.S. as well as Spain, Indonesia and the Dominican Republic.

It delivered hot meals and fresh produce to a Buffalo, N.Y., neighborhood after 10 people were killed in a mass shooting at a supermarket , and distributed food after the Uvalde school shooting in Texas.

More recently, WCK provided more than 20 million meals to people impacted by the dual earthquakes in Turkey and Syria last April. And it has responded to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine by providing millions of meals to people there , first in hard-hit population centers and neighboring countries, and increasingly in more remote and vulnerable areas.

This is not the first time WCK has lost workers in a conflict zone

Workers hug on Tuesday after recovering the bodies of World Central Kitchen staff who were killed by Israeli air strikes in Rafah, Gaza. Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images hide caption

Workers hug on Tuesday after recovering the bodies of World Central Kitchen staff who were killed by Israeli air strikes in Rafah, Gaza.

World Central Kitchen has lost workers before.

Several team members have been killed in Ukraine in recent years, according to the organization.

It said in June that a 60-year-old volunteer named Igor was killed when Russian shelling hit his apartment building in Kharkiv, and that two other volunteers, Sardor and Viktoria, had been killed in a strike in Chuhuiv the previous July. (The group only identified them by their first names.)

Andrés told NPR's Morning Edition in December that WCK had lost a total of six people in Ukraine.

"As a cook, as a chef, when I founded this organization, I never expected that this will happen," he said. "And I almost wanted to pull World Central Kitchen immediately out of Ukraine. But the locals told me: 'José, You cannot leave. We need you. We need your organization.'"

Middle East

Gaza food crisis is nothing like anything chef josé andrés had seen before.

While conflict zones are inherently dangerous, the organization has also faced criticism over its safety record in the past.

In December, Bloomberg published a story alleging — among other accusations — that Andrés looked the other way on matters of staff safety, including demanding that staff send a food truck into parts of Turkey that local officials had declared "no-gos" due to landslides.

Andrés told NPR that disaster and war zones come with risks, and the organization doesn't "push anybody to go."

"Obviously, it's people that maybe they don't feel safe doing this job, but then they shouldn't be in these kind of humanitarian situations," he added. "But from there to say that José Andrés puts people in danger — I'd never be able to tell anybody to do what I'm not willing to do on my own."

The organization has won awards and faced upheaval

World Central Kitchen brought food to the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian in September 2019, one of many natural disasters to which it's responded. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

World Central Kitchen brought food to the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian in September 2019, one of many natural disasters to which it's responded.

WCK has earned plenty of accolades for its work over the years, but has also recently weathered a string of scandals.

Andrés was awarded the 2015 National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama and has twice been named one of TIME's most influential people, among them. A handful of Democratic lawmakers nominated WCK and Andrés himself for the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year.

The nonprofit — which operates on non-governmental contributions — has grown exponentially since its founding. It brought in more than $500 million in contributions and grants in 2022, which the New York Times reports was a fourfold increase from the year before.

While WCK gets perfect scores on watchdog sites like Charity Navigator and Charity Watch, there have been some concerns and criticisms raised recently about where exactly that money is going — including from within the organization itself.

A charity kitchen in Ukraine linked to chef José Andrés was destroyed by a missile

WCK announced last June that as it was spending some $2 million a day in Ukraine, it "learned of suspected instances of fraud" and commissioned a law firm to investigate. It ultimately confirmed instances of fraud that amounted to several million dollars, which the organization called "unacceptable, but still represents a tiny percentage of the $432 million we spent feeding people impacted by war."

It acknowledged it could have invested more in its internal operations to discover "bad actors," and said it was making changes among personnel and partners in both Ukraine and Turkey as a result — as well as implementing additional safeguards to combat fraud, like an anonymous tip line.

The organization has also grown in size, now counting thousands of volunteers and 94 employees, according to 2022 filings .

Humanitarian leaders are condemning the strike

United Nations staff members gather Tuesday around a World Central Kitchen car that was hit by an Israeli strike in Deir al-Balah in Gaza. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

United Nations staff members gather Tuesday around a World Central Kitchen car that was hit by an Israeli strike in Deir al-Balah in Gaza.

WCK said the seven workers killed in the Israeli strike included a Palestinian and citizens of Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom and Canada — with one a dual citizen of the U.S.

U.S. and foreign leaders as well as international organizations are offering their condolences and condemnations, and calling for an independent investigation into the Israeli military strike.

Philippe Lazzarini , the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — which has lost at least 176 employees in Gaza — said the organization provides "much needed food assistance to a starving population."

Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can

He said humanitarian workers are #NotATarget, a hashtag that other human rights groups and public officials are using in their posts about the attack.

Andrés wrote on X that he is heartbroken and grieving for the loved ones of those killed, whom he described as "people ... angels."

"The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing," he said. "It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now."

• World Central Kitchen
• Jose Andres
• disaster relief