Top 134 Quotes & Sayings by Spike Jonze

Be willing to get fired for a good idea.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.

I just want to make whatever is exciting.

Felt is not the easiest thing to animate. It's very flimsy.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

Is artificial intelligence less than our intelligence?

I definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring.

I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older.

I definitely check my phone for texts a lot - like, 'Did anyone text me? Is anyone thinking about me? Does anyone love me?'

I've got to say, I've probably seen a lot more of the Three Stooges than of the Marx Brothers.

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

If you focus your energy on the camera, it takes away from the time you have to focus on the performances.

Moms are people, too. Moms make mistakes, too.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out. Hard to know where you start and the next person stops. Even as an adult, that's a hard thing to know. As a kid, it can be really confusing, because it's all new and you're trying to sort of make your map.

If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself.

I think because I'm not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood.

I like Kanye, and I care about him.

Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book?

I love when me and my friends don't know how to make something - there's that risk of failure, which should be there. If it's guaranteed not to fail, it's something you already know how to do.

Kids are so fiercely opinionated, that if they love the Harry Potter books and they go see the movie, they'll be the first to say, 'That was wrong! They didn't get that right!' They're storytellers themselves. They're critics. They're going to have the critical opinion.

On everything I do I'm always taking someone's money, whether it's a movie studio or a record label. Somebody's paying for it, and I'm always respectful of that. But I'm never going to compromise.

Nicolas Cage, I would love to work with him again. He's just a fearless madman. He'll go anywhere you want to go. He would not say 'no' to anything.

I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around.

Movies, they take years of my life, so I'm fortunate that I get to work in a lot of different mediums.

I think if something's emotionally real - and I'm not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life - you can't really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.

I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.

It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it.

Every actor I've worked with I want to work with again.

As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.

I like naps. I don't drink coffee.

When you're close to somebody, you can never really know how they're experiencing the world.

If you compromise what you're trying to do just a little bit, you'll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you're suddenly really far away from where you're trying to go.

You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.

When I'm making stuff, the thing that excites me most is not the result, but the process and trying to do something I've never done before.

What I learned from the Beastie Boys was to be independent. They set up their own world separate from the label. They built their own studio.

I would love to make video games.

The thing I remember most about having a tantrum is not the rage during the tantrum, but the being freaked out afterwards, and embarrassed, and guilty. It's scary to lose control of yourself.

I knew I could write infinitely about relationships. That's the most beautiful, most confusing, most rewarding, most heartbreaking thing in our lives - and not just romantic relationships: that's all relationships.

I never knew how to do anything before I did it, really.

Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.

I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.

I was only going to go to college because that's what I thought you were supposed to do.

Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.

I like hiring people based on a feeling - this person gets it - rather than what they've done in the past.

I feel like you only have so much time to make stuff. I'm definitely aware of that. I'm also excited about it.

If I heard somebody else say, 'I worked on a movie for five years', I'd be like, 'What? How could it take that long? What were you doing?'

I'm always amazed when any actor can decipher my direction.

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.

I wasn't a film kid.

The world is becoming nicer and easier, but that doesn't mean we are any less lonely or any more connected.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

Samantha Morton is one of the best actresses in the world.

I like the idea of the documentary as a portrait. There's not a chronological beginning, middle, and end structure. You build something in the editing room that's shaped by getting to know the person and digging deeper, unpeeling the layers of them as you get to know them.

If I can make one generalised statement, and generalised statements are never entirely true, nobody wants to be talked down to, kids included.

There was definitely a point in my thirties when I thought, 'Oh, wow, I'm not the youngest person on the set anymore.' But I like it. Working with younger artists is totally exciting.

The invention of the iPod changes how you use music. Suddenly you have music everywhere.

Obviously, movies and music videos are different because they're different lengths, and in a movie, you have more time to explore an idea. But I feel like they're all the same, really.