Top 225 Quotes & Sayings by Ridley Scott - Page 3

Anybody who does 90 takes has a problem.

On 'Black Hawk Down,' I was employing 1,000 Muslims. 'Kingdom of Heaven,' same deal except bigger, probably 1,500 Muslims.

The Gulf of Mexico, they believe, is a huge asteroid. That was an impact zone, you know that? Yeah, for that big a thing to actually hit our globe, it would have had to adjusted the spin, the axis.

You just don't know when you get all the paint across the canvas how it will turn out. When you step back after you've finished, you say, 'This one is not so good. This one is good.'

I've got a terrible knee from too much tennis.

I had been very impressed with the voiceover of 'Apocalypse Now,' with Martin Sheen's voice. That was a great voiceover; it really internalized the Martin Sheen character, who was essentially fairly low key and didn't say a lot during the whole movie. But he thought a lot, so I always thought that was really great.

Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't part of the dynamic of the story.

Unfortunately, we don't seem to learn from history, do we? And you'd think we would.

Sometimes you can do a TV show on a subject you just can't do in film. Either it's too long or studios will perceive it as not being commercial.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

Sacred texts give no specific depiction of God, so for centuries, artists and filmmakers have had to choose their own visual depiction.

I'm a reader. I found out that, whether you're a studio head or a director, you must read your own material. You can't rely on readers.

If somebody's given me X amount of dollars to fulfill a dream, they've got every right to actually say something about it.

I wanted 'Alien' to be all about claustrophobia.

There are some moments that are pretty distressing in 'Prometheus.' In fact, the last hour is pretty distressing.

Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of these scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.

As soon as you're at the higher levels of budgeting, you've got to get the film made, and the only way to support the film is to have actors who can support the budget.

I'm a yarn teller. My job is to engage you as much as I can and as often as I can.

I would like to have a bit of a break and do a comedy.

I unfortunately do suffer for my art.

I watch a lot of 'National Geographic.'

I was one of those kids who tended to stay in on Saturday nights. My mother used to come and say, 'Why don't you go to the dance with the boys?' And I'm going, 'No, I'm perfectly happy.' I think my parents thought I was definitely weird.

If studios don't get their money back, we don't have any movies. So it is important that films are successful, and I am fully supportive of that because I'm not just a director, I'm also not stupid. I've been in this business long enough and, to a certain extent, I'm a businessman; I know the importance of that.

I don't make films for other people; I make films for me.

The very first film I ever saw was a pirate movie called 'The Black Swan' with Tyrone Power. And I thought that was great stuff. Of course, in those days, Technicolor was really Technicolor; there was no such thing as desaturation. Everybody looked super suntanned.

The idea of flying in general does not appeal to me. I can barely understand why people want to fly at all, other than that it's occasionally necessary.

I'm used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo.

Because I was a kid from north of England, the only films I had access to was not alternative cinema, which in those days would be foreign cinema; I would be looking at all the Hollywood movies that arrived at my High Street.

If 'formulaic' is somebody who is unlikely to succeed starting down a process and succeeding - then isn't that what most films are about? And art films are about people who aren't likely to succeed and then don't succeed.

I've got many letters from Muslim organizations thanking me for making 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

The 3D world allows you to engage even more with a film because you're somehow drawn into the landscape or the universe of that scene. Even when it's two people talking at a table, you feel like you're a third party.

By going to a preview, a director becomes insidiously infected by the process, so by the end of it, you're thinking, 'It may be a bit too long.'

Audiences are smarter than ever; they know if filmmakers cheat an environment.

They say, 'TV is not a captive audience,' but it definitely is. You can easily switch off the bloody television.

Oddly enough, I find it quite engaging to be working with a female when I'm directing. It's kind of interesting.

I'm a very practical person.

Sometimes I find I'm wearing a divided, split brain in terms of drama and humor.

I think there are a lot of men who feel they're being emasculated by having the woman be in charge; I've never had that problem.

The people who really resurrected 'Blade Runner' was 'MTV.'

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

It's very difficult to find good scripts in Hollywood any more.

The digital and theatrical markets are two different marketplaces.

I think there's nothing worse than inertia. You can be inert and study your navel, and gradually fall off the chair. I think the key is to keep flying.

I like a film such as 'American Beauty,' and I like 'Spider-Man.'

Once, I got slaughtered after 'Blade Runner' by Pauline Kael: three pages of slaughter. I was so offended, I would never read any more press.

A word on 'Kingdom of Heaven:' if you get the four-disc set, which is 3 hr. 8 min., you'll see why it's such a good movie. It was a real passion project, and it's the film I'm most proud of. I think it was treated incredibly unfairly.

I didn't want to go down the route of spending a year of my life making a movie that would never be seen. I may as well go down a route making a film that a lot of people will see, which is the whole idea behind cinema.

Business fascinates me. It's very creative.

If you go back and look, a completely underrated film is 'Quest for Fire.' That was one of the most genius, simplistic but incredibly sophisticated notion of what it was. The evolution of that was just fantastic.

I think over time I've learned to stop being a screamer and get interactive; otherwise, you get killed in Hollywood. I stopped being a screamer shortly after 'Blade Runner,' kicking doors and things like that, because I wasn't actually getting anywhere.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

I used to agonise over what to do next, but now I'm making a movie a year. It's insane, but it's only a movie after all. You just hang in there, and occasionally you might make something which you can call art... briefly.

The time it would take me to write a screenplay it would take me the time to make two films. I would rather make the movies, and I'm a better moviemaker than I would be writer.

I love designing, and I still do it.

The word 'comedy' implies slapstick.

'Alien' is a landmark. One of the really good science-fiction films.

It doesn't matter how much faith you have or don't have. I just don't buy the idea that we're alone. There's got to be some form of life out there.

Sometimes, scenes are great without any music at all.

There's a little thing on your shoulder called intuition and it whispers in your ear. Everyone has that, there is a voice telling you to do something. Most people ignore it - but you must listen to it. I do it every day, all day.

Never be put off by anything because failure teaches you something.