Top 93 Quotes & Sayings by James Gray - Page 2

I think to be a movie critic is troubling from one major respect. If you are forced to watch ten movies a week, it's really only something you can do for a few years. After a while, it's a bit too much.

My wife and I had been to the genetic counselor; my wife is not Jewish - she's the shiksha goddess type - and was negative for everything. But I was positive. I carried the gene for three genetic disorders, which, if she had been positive for, we would have passed down to the child.

It's much easier to make a movie with kind of stylistic pyrotechnics because you can hide behind that if there's a gap in the story.

Anyone who starts badmouthing Latino immigrants is not only a racist but ignorant. You need to refer them to what was written about the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, any group you want.

'Apocalypse Now' poses questions without any attempt to provide definitive answers, and the film's profound ambiguities are integral to its enduring magic.

To the extent that independent means you're willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I'm independent until the day I die.

Sean Penn has announced his retirement from acting about 72 times.

The decision about digital or film is going to be made for us. I think the answer is that film is gonna be gone, although I think it'll make a comeback; it'll be like vinyl records or something.

I don't envy the job of people who have to watch five movies a day - that's insane.

I've learned that you can never predict what will happen to a film. You can never predict if people will love it, if they'll hate it. It's an act of ego if you're hoping for everyone to love the film and tell you how great you are.

I'm not a website guy, although I'm not a Luddite, either. I have looked at a computer, but I don't go to PopSugar and Goop and all that.

'Apocalypse Now' does not alienate us or deconstruct itself. In fact, it welcomes us in.

The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It's much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.

As ugly an admission as this is, I met my wife at a party, and if I had been to the same party and she were dressed in different clothes, I might never have talked to her. She might have projected something that I found distasteful, even if she otherwise looked exactly the same - a beautiful woman to me.

I have three young children, and I kind of stopped going to movies in 2006. I go to see some, but I'm a little bit out of touch, and I didn't know who Marion Cotillard was.

I was going to Studio 54 when I was 12 years old. It's true. It's crazy.

If you read about the astronauts who went to the moon - the 12 who walked on it, and the others who orbited - all suffered serious mental trauma of one kind or another.

All I can say is sometimes home gets burned into your occipital lobe, and it can't leave you, and there's always that longing.

The key to acting - from what little I know about that wonderful craft - is listening, and interacting with the other person in order to achieve magic. One way to do that is almost to provoke.

Time can be very good or very cruel to films.

At a certain point, you have to kind of realize that greatness is a messy thing.

I think storytelling is a thing of beauty, and also very difficult. It's a craft you have to continue to work at.

I would love it if my films made a lot of money, and may I say that 'The Yards' is the only one that's lost money.

The films I grew up loving, and the art that I love, is not generally the kind of postmodern ironic winking stuff. What lasts is the stuff in which the artists are totally in league with the subject.

It's very difficult to put your finger on why a certain actor or actress will capture your attention, and you'll think they're right for a role. There's an essence to a person.

I don't think my parents told me enough how the world doesn't really care about me. I think it's important to tell children that the world doesn't really care about you. You have to fight to be heard.

It's the demand of all demands to do a car chase that's unique because there are so many... really since the beginning of film, even in the silent era, 'The Keystone Cops.'

Actors do want to work with me and I'm very grateful for that, but you never know. I could write parts for them that they don't want to play and then all of the sudden they don't want to work with you that much.

If we continue as we have for the past 20 years in California, in the year 2020, everybody in the State will either be in prison or running one.

The audience cares what the movie looks like, not about the sleepless night you had worrying about the thing getting developed.

You should just write the movie based on people you actually know and then just see who wants to play it. Cast the net.

Life affirming doesn't mean good things happen.

Actors want to work with you but they want you to do their thing. Actors, whom I love with a blind partiality, sometimes they want to be soloists in the symphony, not a part of the orchestra.