Top 39 Quotes & Sayings by Roman Polanski
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French director Roman Polanski.
Last updated on April 21, 2025.
My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way.
I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I'm not envious of anyone-and this is my biggest satisfaction.
I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line.
I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I'm playing.
I did not have a reputation to defend.
If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children.
I still had some honor... I still have some now.
Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater.
You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.
Whenever I get happy, I always have a terrible feeling.
I never made a film which fully satisfied me.
In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent.
Normal love isn't interesting. I assure you that it's incredibly boring.
I would rather live in a country where children are protected and their predators prosecuted, and even (which in Hollywood is evidently not always the same thing) disapproved of.
Some experience is helpful. "The Pianist" was a film that I could make with my eyes closed because I had lived it and everything was still alive in me.
I know that atmosphere of the Parisian apartment building, with the twin menaces of the concierge on the ground floor and the landlord upstairs.
I don't rehash the past. It's my baggage. That's all. I accept things as they are.
The best films are because of nobody but the director.
To the audience it doesn't really matter how much the director struggled with an actor. It's the result that counts.
I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million - a gamble for high stakes.
I would love to make a film about aging that would take place before the war. It would follow the stages in the life of a woman who would not have at her disposal the resources of today like cosmetic surgery, creams and pills.
When I really love a movie, I don't want to spoil it by too frequent visits. But I like to come back to certain films, which I admire.
It's easy to direct while acting - there's one less person to argue with.
I don't know anyone who is not using drugs for the reason that they're illegal.
Why did Erich von Stronheim leave Germany? Why did Hitchcock leave England? If you were a director you'd like to work in Hollywood too. Now go ahead and ask me if I'm still Polish. You people keep asking me this question. You want Polish artists to make it in the world, but when they do, you accuse them of treason.
I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I'm not envious of anyone - and this is my biggest satisfaction.
I consider myself more a craftsman than an artist.
It's very important to set your place in a concrete environment. I think Chekhov said that the important thing when you have a play or any kind of novel is to set the roots in a concrete place.
I like skiing, among other things, because I have moments when I am alone in the mountains. That's fantastic, when there's nobody around you. You see miles around you, and the sun is almost down .
With each film, i need an artistic challenge so I don't get bored! I like to tackle challenges.
I sometimes cry in the moments that are not necessarily dramatic or tragic in the films, often because of the music. I wonder whether it's the music that has that effect on you in this film.
If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But f-ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f- young girls. Juries want to f- young girls. Everyone wants to f- young girls!
Every failure made me more confident. Because I wanted even more to achieve as revenge, to show that I could.
I admire actors for their infinite patience. That's why they need all those trailers and all their crowd of people who pamper them. But it is a drag to get up sometimes at 4:30 in the morning and get into makeup, and wait forever until they call you onto the set.
I simply think there's life after movies. I have to adhere to this philosophy, and therefore I like other things, and I have other passions. None are as big as movie-making, but they exist.
I don't think that there would be more users if drugs were legalized.
Happy endings make me puke.
The torches ran off, and I found myself in a forest, at night, without any light, on skis, and that was not fun - particularly because I was drunk. Luckily at some point I started to see the light of the ski lift. To be in the forest in the middle of the night, it's terrible.
The whole showmanship is NOT to answer every question.
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