Top 91 Quotes & Sayings by M. Night Shyamalan
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American director M. Night Shyamalan.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
If I'm hesitant at all about an idea, then that's not the right idea.
Anime is intended to have ambiguous features. That's part of the art form.
When I was a kid, I had two great guilty pleasures. One was horror movies and the other was martial arts movies.
I have a naive outlook on life. That's who I am.
I have worked hard and learnt that I have to make a decision - whether I am going to conform and protect myself or not. I chose not to.
My normal cycle for movies is eighteen months and each part is separate.
'The Exorcist' is the scariest movie ever made. It just felt dead-on real, like you were watching the existence of the devil.
Over the course of history, the people who are not scared go into the woods and are mauled by a bear, are not going to survive.
My biggest fear in life is to be average.
See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky?
I offer originality: you don't know what my films are like until you go to them. I think that's the reason I've been getting all this attention.
'The Last Airbender' is genetically engineered for me. I love martial arts. I study it. The movie's based on a lot of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. I was raised Hindu.
My secret to all casting, and specifically kids, is cast good human beings.
I knew the moment it happened, it was a miracle. I could have been kissing her when she threw up. It would have scarred me for life. I may never have recovered.
Is it possible that there are no coincidences?
There's a monster outside my room, can I have a glass of water?
The combination of the CGI, 3-D, and sound effects, it's just impossible to separate them. It gives you a more immersive experience, and I prefer that.
Always in life bad times will lead to great times.
Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.
There are a lot of things I can take, and a few that I can't. What I can't take is when my older brother, who's everything that I want to be, starts losing faith in things. I saw that look in your eyes last night. I don't ever want to see that look in your eyes again.
I don't want to pretend I'm any cooler or smarter than I am.
I don't like to chase an audience. You can smell when someone is chasing an audience and it's not good.
I'm a big believer in our connection to nature.
I grew up watching Steven Spielberg and scary movies.
There is no one looking out for us. We are all alone.
The thing that's protected me creatively is that the movies have made profits.
That's something we should be taught as kids: To be okay with ourselves.
Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters.
If I had a big brother who was a year older than me or something, I probably wouldn't have ended up being a filmmaker.
Being insecure - I'm a master, a virtuoso - they can be handing me the keys to the kingdom and all I can think is, I hope I don't drop the key.
So 'The Last Airbender' 's philosophy and culture feels like a beautiful idea to me: That we inherently have connections to the elements and what they teach us, and to each other.
When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope.
I've never had an issue with studios. I believe in them as true creative partners in the process.
Are you in my dream too?
For instance, 'The Sixth Sense' had mediocre to bad reviews. Slowly, the audience pushed it and it received critical attention.
I feel most akin as an artist, in my life and my career, to Agatha Christie.
I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself.
If ever I was feeling down I would go and write something. It's a form of escape.
I love my stories being multi-layered, and coming at it from different angles, so that you don't understand the film's true emotional motivation until the very end.
I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them, anyway!
When you say 'fear of the unknown', that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it's genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we're not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.
The first two movies I directed failed, when I was 21 and 23, and that was the greatest thing that could have happened.
You don't get to celebrate yourself unless you risk being mocked or rejected. As an artist, you cannot play it safe. You just can't.
For instance, The Sixth Sense had mediocre to bad reviews. Slowly, the audience pushed it and it received critical attention.
I try to take B genre movies and treat them as if they're A dramas. Get the cinematographers, get the actors to do an A drama, but it just happens to be about aliens or ghosts or crazy people, or killers, or whatever it is.
I find it very eerie when somebody is being really polite.
Each of the actors need to have their justification for saying something awful. You want everyone to have a positive and negative thing. Even a positive thing needs to have darkness in it. It needs to have depth.
A TV show where all of the characters are trying to figure out what's going on, and the suspense of that, fits my [voice] really well. You feel their frustration, anger and fear, and then, when the reveal happens, their sense of dread or horror, or whatever it is, and I like to paint with those colors.
When you say fear of the unknown, that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and its genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because were not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.
There are scenes that were right on the edge, but I always try to err on non-indulgence. It's something that I'm very careful about, that I'm just leaning too hard into something.
I love 'The Killing', I love 'Homeland' and 'Mad Men', all those shows that lean into the tone of things.
I'm so from the Woody Allen/Spike Lee school.
There's no staying where you were. If you're not doing anything, your skills and point of view are atrophying.
When you find your voice, your life takes on grace.
You're never the same. You're degrading, or you're getting better. You don't stay the same.
People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance.
My directing style is long takes. The longer take I can do, the more I can think of not doing it in cuts, the better.
Giving should be a part of your routine, just like working out, eating, and sleeping.
Sometimes people can write really great scenes and even a great episode, but they can't see the bigger picture.
Sometimes we do not do things that we wish to do, so others will not know that we wish to do them.
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