Top 8 Quotes & Sayings by Jaco Van Dormael

If you're not compulsively a monomaniac, you'll never make a film. It's like taking the same chewing gum, every morning, and saying, "Okay, it has a lot of taste," and continuing to chew it.

An actor can play two or three lines where he says one thing, but plays the opposite. That's the most important moving part of a film.

When I write, I speak with ghosts for years, and I see images that are a little bit out of focus. I see faces, but the faces change. At the moment that it's a real human being that's flesh and bone, it changes a character. It's much more precise and complex.

In stories, everything has to have clear consequences and everything has to focus to the end. Everything at the end will give meaning to everything that precedes. In my own life, the consequences of the choices I've made aren't always very clear. The most beautiful things are sometimes not totally truthful, and the end will not give more meaning to everything that precedes.

Having a big budget, I have no problem with spending the movie. It's fantastic to have a big budget. It gives a lot of time. It gives a lot of freedom. What's difficult is raising the money beforehand, and then when the investor wants the money back, afterwards.

When I fall in love, I don't know why I fall in love, I just know that I am in love.

There is a big difference between storytelling and being alive. Those are the two things that I prefer in life - telling stories and being alive.

A film is like a message dropped in a bottle in the sea that somebody finds. Every time somebody finds it, it's a miracle. But, I don't know what the perception will be. I can know what I tried to do, but I never know what the perception is.