Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by Riley Stearns

I do like to have a clean slate, especially when you're in indie film.

My perspective is a white man's perspective and nothing else. I can't speak for anyone else or say something I'm not versed in.

I think it's so cool that the younger generation is so much more fluid in this regard. You don't have to be a certain type of person if you're a man, or just because you're a man, or vice versa for a woman.

I was really interested in doing a martial arts movie, but maybe exploring ideas that maybe you wouldn't think to explore in a martial arts movie.

I lost ten pounds while shooting 'Faults' somehow and by the end of the shoot people were basically handing me stuff to eat in between takes.

I've always been fascinated by cults even as a kid.

I have always been fascinated by cults and mind control, and specifically deprogramming from the cult.

'Faults,' in a lot of ways, is still is a heightened film, but the end of the day, it's the real world. It's in '86, is the arbitrary date that I've set. And so I went about it in a more realistic way.

For me, I never look down at my characters.

Cinematically speaking, there's more of a striking appeal to karate. It's kicking and punching action. Jiu-jitsu is dudes rolling around and wrestling.

Specifically for 'Faults,' the three films I mention most as inspiration are 'Dogtooth,' 'Fargo' and 'Punch-Drunk Love.'

Tattoos are traditionally super masculine, but I just like it. I like the art.

I would say the biggest challenge on any film is always time.

I'm definitely not making movies solely for myself. That's something that I hear people say in the past, all they care about is that they like what they're making. They don't care what other people think. I think that's a disservice to the project and to the people that are working on it.

It just makes me laugh, when you talk to people who are 'typical' men, masculine, they watch sports and they can armchair quarterback, but they don't do anything themselves and they judge your masculinity.

I'll admit I'm still getting used to using preferred pronouns here and there. Actually changing the way that you address people can be a challenge. It's not from a place of not understanding, but conditioning.

It would be crazy to write a movie - which, I've seen these movies before - where someone is a beginner, has their training montage, and all of a sudden, they're an expert.

To think that there's one version of a man is ridiculous.

I went to UT in Austin for a year as an undeclared liberal arts student. After that year I applied to the film program but didn't get in so I dropped out and moved out to L.A.

I always wanted to learn French or Italian growing up. I love the romantic sound of those languages.

I don't want to think I'm making fun of anything ever, especially my characters.

I love making movies that I want to see made and I want to see on the screen, but I also want to make movies that people enjoy and want to watch.

I don't plan a lot of shots, but going into shooting and prep, I've got certain things that stand out to me.

Jujitsu helped me a lot in feeling more comfortable with who I was.

The script for 'The Art of Self-Defense,' to be fair, I knew going into it that it was going to be a hard movie to get made.

I was questioning what it means to be a man. I didn't feel as masculine as I thought I should. I was out of shape, slightly depressed, inactive, and didn't feel like I belonged to something. I started thinking about what the definition of a man is, and realized they're all these archaic tropes.

When everyone decides that they have to be a certain way, that there's one way to be a man and one way to be a woman, that's when we go down the wrong path.

When I was nineteen, I moved to L.A.

Sometimes I wonder how my filmmaking would have been affected by film school but in the end I'm glad I got to figure it out on my own.

I grew up lower-middle class outside of Austin, I'm a white guy, and I write movies.

As long as you're a good person and you're doing things that don't hurt other people, whoever you are, just embrace that.

I really like films that don't let the score influence the tone too much.

I go back home for Christmas every year. Inevitably, somebody from my family will say, 'How's the karate going?' I've told them a million times I do jiu-jitsu, but it's always, 'This is Riley. He does karate.' They're very different art forms!

I think violence should be a bit much sometimes because I don't like glorifying violence.

I play bass, and I wanted to be a musician.