Top 98 Quotes & Sayings by Jeff Nichols

In terms of my personal spirituality and everything else, it's ever-evolving. I have a desire to want more out of the universe. But the older I get, the further I get from any specifics about that.

I wrote 'Mud' for Matthew McConaughey and had never met him.

I thought 'Mud' would be such an easy film for people to understand.

What Richard and Mildred Loving did was, by their nature, not by any calculus, they separated themselves from the political conversation. They did not have an agenda. They did not want to be martyrs. They did not want to be symbols of a movement.

My characters aren't chess pieces. I don't move them around some big board. I actually care about these fictitious people.

The films that have influenced me most are: 'The Hustler', 'Badlands', 'Hud', 'Tender Mercies', 'Cool Hand Luke', 'A Perfect World', and 'Laurence of Arabia'. I also really like 'Fletch'. I feel like all of these films reached an honest place in regard to the human condition while also stringing together really entertaining stories.

I'm not as worried about the process of writing, simply because I think I've got that one down, you know? I think I know what brings specificity to these ideas, what brings specificity to the genre elements, or anything else, and it's personal emotions.

I think when you're talking about marriage equality and race, people very quickly start to get into their political corners: their ideology comes to the forefront, and they get into this platform argument that they're used to making, which really doesn't have anything to do with the day-to-day basics of what is being talked about.

Nature is the purest thing we can touch and observe. It can be the most beautiful and also the most devastating.

Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.

Your reaction when you lose control in a situation is to try and hang on tighter.

I'll say this: I think from a directing standpoint, 'Loving' is my most accomplished film. Strictly from a technical, directing point of view.

I think I could probably make $5 to $10m movies for a very long time and live a perfectly good life doing it. I'd probably get paid as well as a surgeon, which is pretty damn remarkable for a guy who went to film school.

Your whole life is changed with that first child. Your social behaviors are all turned upside down, you're sleep deprived, but eight months in, my son had this seizure, and it just woke me up to the idea that, oh, no, this can end. And it can end in a way that will destroy you forever.

'Shotgun Stories' and 'Take Shelter'... I was willing to make those with no money and no time. With 'Mud,' I just wanted to protect it until I could have the resources. It's a real tricky movie.

I think the way you make a movie dictates the movie that you make.

I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.

I really don't care about plot. I really, really don't.

We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.

I have a very linear mind.

My first job in the film business was working as a production assistant, and then a production manager on a documentary about Townes Van Zandt.

It's amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you're doing.

I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.

I can talk to execs very clearly, very plainly. I don't get nervous in front of them anymore.

I never wanted to make movies just for me. I want to make movies that people watch.

There's always somebody you can call and go have lunch with and just talk out an idea. And it's great, because I need that. It's part of my writing process, to early on sit people down and say, 'Alright, this film I'm working on...' and I tell them everything I have.

Endings don't have anything to do with what your movie is about. Now, there is an emotional climax, there's an emotional resolution that is 100 percent important. If I get that wrong, get your money back.

If you want someone to show up and execute your script for you, seriously, there are a lot of great people out there. Don't call me.

I think we're so advanced when it comes to watching narrative material. I mean, it's all we do is consume content all day long. So when a character walks onscreen, you immediately start making connections for that character: Is that a good guy? Is that a bad guy?

I have gained a lot of confidence in my process of making films. It does't mean I'll make a successful film or even a good film, but I know how to make my film.

I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.

Actors are real. It's a real skill, and it exists, and talent really exists.

The more we try to control our kids and create who they are and where they're going, the more that will fall apart. That's a dangerous thing. So you need to actually manage the fear and figure out who your kids are. Who do they want to be and how can you help shape that, but not control it.

My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.

I've only seen one snake out in the wilderness, not behind glass, and I froze. I literally couldn't move. So to say I have a fear of snakes would be true.

There are great advantages of making things on the independent market. There's freedom and control there, and kind of a cleanness to the process that I like.

I haven't seen 'Room' yet. People tell me 'Room' is such an amazing film, but ever since I had a kid, I just can't. I can't do it. It's not fun. It's not a place I want to be.

We've gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that's an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.

I love 'Lawrence of Arabia,' big sweeping films. I want my films to feel that way, to be on a big canvas.

You have actors you've worked with previously, and you have actors you haven't worked with that you've seen in things where you know they can work in these parts. And then there are actors who blow you away, who surprise you.

I've been really lucky when it comes to casting kids, and I don't particularly like child actors. Too often, they just show up, and they've had whatever real innocence that's in a child just beaten out of them. They start to perform for you, and you can just see it coming. It's no good.

My connection to 'Aquaman' came out through the Sony hack. It had no relationship to reality. I was not on that film. I was not hired to work on that film. I had been talking to Warner Bros. about it.

Most film productions, when they're based at a place, they get, like, a 30-mile radius or a 30-minute radius to get out of the town. And once you go past that, your day starts to become shorter, and you have to start paying your drivers more, and everybody just gets paid more, and you have less time to shoot, and everything costs more.

I don't think 'Shotgon Stories' or 'Take Shelter' have hopeless endings. I think there's hope in both those films, no matter how hard you have to search for it. It's there.

I'm really calculating when it comes to these scripts - I'm really calculated about character behavior and dialogue.

There's one right place to put the camera. I'm a big believer in that. You'd think you could put it anywhere. Nope.

If I can drive down the road in my car and listen to XM satellite, and when a song gets beamed into my car, it can tell me who wrote the song and what the damn lyrics are, why, when you broadcast a digital signal of a film, can't it speak to your television to set up a list of settings to show the film in the way that it was meant to be shown?

I really don't know how to tell you what it feels like to be a parent.

A lot of independent filmmakers are really catty.

Definitely when you give a script to an actor, it's like dropping a capsule in water and the fizzing starts. That's when the thing starts to live and breathe.

There's a reason why I use film. It's because it's the best representation of how our eyes work. I really believe that. I think it's better than digital.

There's a rhythm and a cadence in a scene, and when an actor understands without any real direction from you, then that's a very valuable gift. And some people get it, and some people don't.

As a storyteller, you have to have something to say. You have to look at the world, think about it in relationship to yourself, and say, 'I think this is a pattern,' or 'I think this is the way fatherhood works,' or 'I think this is the way first love feels.' The danger in that is, that's when you open yourself up to real critique.

I am not going to approve the home-screening format for my film just carte blanche in lieu of a theatrical screening when I cannot trust that it will ever be seen in the format that it's intended to be.

I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.

The funny thing about 'Take Shelter' is that a lot of people talk about how it was allegory for the economy and things that were to happen. And that was so on the nose in the movie for me. I was like, 'That's obvious.' It's the other stuff about marriage and commitment and those other things that I spent the most time thinking about.

A lot of people have a belief system that is strictly based on religious dogma.

When my son was 8 months old, he had a febrile seizure. You know, if you're in the first year - my wife and I refer to it as the 'darkness.' You're just underwater.

'Mud' was a depository for a little more nostalgia and just a different kind of feeling, a different kind of mood. Something that's not so dark. Something that does actually have a happy ending and is a little more hopeful.

The real cost is always more than just the money you shell out.