Top 52 Quotes & Sayings by Abel Ferrara

I come from a world where you get the film done, that's a success.

Life is what happens when you're doing other things, right?

As an old-time New Yorker, it's not that I miss the '70s and '80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.

I don't care if I get $50 million to do a film.

Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it's like, 'Yes, let's do it.'

There's no such thing as a non-final cut director.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

I'm not a big fan of talking about dying. And then I make a movie where I kill everybody.

It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.

Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.

I don't have a problem with Werner Herzog.

As barbaric is we are, it's a miracle we haven't blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.

I'm about my characters.

No one can stop me from talking about my movie.

I don't know what DVD commentaries are about. I'd like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.

I'm a lapsed Buddhist like I'm a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point.

I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.

I don't care if I get $50m to do a film.

The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.

I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

Where I come from you're not raised to think on your own. It's not that you're pushed to read the Bible. The Bible is read to you.

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

My existence is about making movies, so I've just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I'm there.

My life is proof that I don't need you to do what I do. If there's no one to see it, I'll watch it.

The last day of your life is still going to be a day.

But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.

With 'New Rose Hotel,' I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that's all I was going to get.

Making money is not gonna change anything about what I am, except I won't answer the door.

The more you get into any religion, it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself. How you look to help other people, and how you get out of this 'I, me, mine' type of thing.

I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.

The actors that I love to work with, they're hard on me. They're pushing me.

Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.

That's the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.

In the film business, it's basically honor among thieves.

A lifetime isn't long enough to learn how to make films.

I'm in a house where if the washing machine shuts off, it sings a song. If iPad gets a message, it sings a song. I'm living in a real postmodern time - every single thing sings to you to tell you it's started, it's stopped, you've got a message, you didn't get a message.

?ow can we be, even if it is the last day on earth? It's like Christmas Eve. "Okay, it's going to be Christmas. So what. What are you going to do? Jump off the Empire State Building?" It's all still the same. The last day of your life is still going to be a day. Then there's that thing, maybe it's not true. Who knows? Are you going to believe it? Are you going to buy it? There are a lot of other things that are important, you know. You know what they say. Life is what happens when you're doing other things, right?

I direct, and I make movies I can't finance. I can't raise money. I can't sell anything. I make things.

I don't need to push myself. I don't need to sharpen my own knife and slit my throat. I'm trying to chill it and find an equilibrium and a balance to my work.

When I talk about drugs and alcohol, I'm talking about sex addiction, gambling addiction, eating addiction, throwing-up addiction. I'm not talking about mental illness.

A script is not a piece of literature, it's a process.

Even if you're a poet sitting in your room writing a poem, you're still in the world - although I guess being a poet is a different than having to deal with 40 or 50 people to raise a couple million bucks and all that bullshit.

My job is going to be to direct the film - I'm going to do it. And that's where my job ends.

Movies are only the result of where we are as human beings.

My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy. He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him, he brought his food with him, he brought his language with him, he never spoke a word of English.

There's a difference between the world ending tomorrow and just drinking and drugging yourself to death.

I don't want to live anywhere where I'm breathing two million cars' fumes and paying a zillion dollars for the right to be totally hassled.

The world is constantly changing. You're constantly learning and you have to be willing to get off your mark, and get off your spot and take that knowledge you have not to fix yourself into a place but to keep going.

It's always a problem when you're working with people you don't really know. Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting. You know, these month - or two-month-long endeavors that millions of dollars are based on, and the people doing them don't even know each other, or know each other under pressure, or know each other when things are really... Which filmmaking is completely done under in many circumstances. You're under constant crisis, making a movie.

I grew up in the Bronx. I'm into rap music.