Top 173 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Linklater - Page 2

To jump from the indie ranks to play with the big dogs, there's a gate you have to pass through.

I realized a long time ago that, even as a kid, it's all about the choices you make, the things you pursue. In the end, you're a sum of your choices.

I was dating girls who were actresses, and that was fun, so I took a playwriting class. But that was short-lived. That was one year. Around that time, I was seeing movies that were making me think in terms of images.

Music and smells are the most memory-recall, nostalgia-inducing things.

One minute you're starting left fielder, hitting home runs; the next, it's career over. I was 20.

I wrote a script - a script about a guy working on the automobile assembly line; I never could get money for that. I did a pilot about minimum wage workers for HBO that didn't get picked up; they thought it was depressing, even though it was a comedy.

There are really smart baseball players. It's a thinking person's game.

If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'

I just love being on a movie set. I like making movies.

No one believes this, but when I'm working, it's the same, whether I'm working on 'Bad News Bears,' 'Before Sunset,' 'A Scanner Darkly,' or 'Fast Food Nation.' I'm the same person, trying to make it work.

When I did 'Slacker,' I didn't own cowboy hats or boots. I was like, 'That's not me.'

I always say I'll never make a film in Austin in summer, but I always end up here.

My dad's chill. He's the guy who, you wreck the car, he says, 'Well, nobody was hurt. It's just some metal.'

I'm not enough of one of those public personalities who feels as though he's been one-dimensionalized. I don't feel that strongly enough.

Some films really do take years to get going, but I'd say that most of the films I want to do are slightly smaller projects. Some could be sketches. They're not all oil paintings.

County jail in some ways can be the most dangerous because it's often the least regulated.

As a little kid, you go where your parents drag you. You have no agency, no dominion.

I'm lucky that I get to jump around, do a big-budget comedy and then a smaller film. I don't even make a big distinction between them.

My working method has always been, 'Work really hard and get it right the first time.'

Every film's different; every story is so different. But I think I've always been attracted to try to take something minimal and to maximize it cinematically. To find out if I can I really go all the way with one idea.

I try to avoid bad experiences.

I guess I don't have a grandiose view of the world in general, and I never believe it when someone else has a grandiose moment.

There are really a lot of dark shadings to a lot of my stuff.

I grew up in a little town in east Texas where it was really not on the table to question certain things like whether you should eat meat or not.

When I saw 'subUrbia' on stage, I started having those feelings inside me. I saw it as a film, and I felt I knew the characters, or I was the characters. It really dredged up all this stuff in me that never went away.

I remember when I made 'A Scanner Darkly,' going, 'I hope people see it in theater - but I think it's going to be seen in someone's room at two in the morning.' It's that kind of movie. And I would have loved if it had been available on multiple formats at the moment it opened.

I've made movies where people say it's their favourite, but they don't take it seriously because it just didn't seem to break through commercially.

Maybe part of being a dad means that the slightest little thing will make me tear up.

As I get older, my emotions are closer to the surface.

I've done my part to 'ruin' Austin.

Every college player thinks they're on their way. But, delusions aside, I might have toiled in the minor leagues for a bit.

Plots are artificial. Does your life have a plot? It has characters. There is a narrative. There's a lot of story, a lot of character. But plot? Eh, no.

Took me a long time to know I was a nobody from nowhere.

Pro athletes, how they go through the world is so elevated. The bubble they're in is one of entitlement. And that starts young. By the time they're in college, they've had it a lot of their life.

Anything that confirms for me the transitory nature of reality isn't bad. It's a good lesson in human hubris.

The natural phenomenon of the universe is so mind-blowing, but you have to know about it. You have to be curious. You've got to find it on your own. If you're lucky, you do.

I like films that just put you in someone's world. It can be very subversive. Hitchcock would put you in the mind of a psychopath, and you'd care about them.

I'm interested in people forging their realities.

The '70s kind of sucked.

I look up and go, 'I'm living in the world I visualized a long time ago.' From making movies, to the Film Society, to just being in a film world. It's a life that I wanted to inhabit. I think everyone has the opportunity to do that in this world - it's just, are you gonna work for it, and how much does it mean to you?

Artists are great. They jump in.

When you have a film that's acclaimed, there's a tendency to go big or get serious or something, but I had an impulse to do the opposite.

I'm the kid who wanted to grow up and be Bugs Bunny. I was very, very disappointed when I realized I couldn't grow up and be a cartoon character.

I've always been interested in the industrialization of our food; it's been an issue for me from an environmental and animal rights and human health perspective.

For a lot of us, awareness is merely realizing the extent to which we've been lied to all our lives. You start educating yourself. You become motivated; you follow your muse where it takes you. And you see the world in a different way. You start making decisions based on what you feel is right.

Some of our favorite films are obviously not written by the person who directed it. And yet a 'Taxi Driver,' or some Nicholas Ray movie, like 'In a Lonely Place,' seems so personal or obsessive or whatever.

The arts were like, there's no opponent. It's just yourself. I'm not saying they don't make the arts a competition with awards and all that, but that's outside the work itself.

I grew up in Huntsville, which is a main prison town. It's crazy. The conditions are so bad in prison, often, for the inmates.

I played baseball in high school, and in some parallel universe, if I had not gone into filmmaking, I may have been the coach cursing at the kids.

Every stage of filmmaking's important while you're doing it, so I spend most of my time figuring out how to tell the story. I have all these stories and ideas, but it's how to tell the story.

I'm kind of an old theater guy, so I'm sort of attuned to it. Like, when I go to New York, I go to plays.

I really do remember everything. I see people I haven't seen in 20 years, and I can talk with them about what we talked about outside the high school.

It was always kind of sad when your favorite punk rockers, like Jello Biafra or someone, would say they hate something you like. It was, 'Oh, I thought we were on the same page.'

You don't really grow up until you quit playing sports.

I have an uncomfortable groove, 'cause I have a lot of different kinds of stories to tell.

A certain kind of film is a big theatrical film and a certain kind of film isn't. It doesn't bother me so much that you can pick your format.

I remember daydreaming out in the outfield: I wish I had more time. I want to read 'The Brothers Karamazov.'

I always thought that I had a pretty diverse body of work, I mean, as far as subject matter. Teenage rock and roll movie; romance; '20s Western. On paper it looks different, but then there's similarities in the vibe of them.

Everybody just wants to appreciate time as it's passing, to be in the moment. It's the hardest thing to do. You're either in the unknown future that you're working toward, or you're in the past that becomes a little abstract.

I think people forget how radical the narrative of 'Slacker' is. There's no story, you know? We could go from one character to the next to the next and never return.