Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Directors

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty.

This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'

You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.

Monsters are the patron saints of imperfection.

Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves.

A good director is not an expert in anything in particular. A good director just knows a little bit about everything.

I always felt as a kid that I was underappreciated, invisible or weird, but I've always secretly thought people would one day appreciate what is different about me. I'm always putting that message out there.

Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.

When we're talking about diversity, it's not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us.

Every single life is about construction and destruction.

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction.

The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.

My job is to have new ideas and take risks every day, so I'm always looking forward to the next thing being done or making the next thing that I haven't yet gotten to. That's sort of the constant in my life.

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

In terms of the symbolism, I think that if you do it right, writing is a bit like dreaming.

As you get older, you want less from the world; you just want to experience it. Any barriers to feeling emotions get dismantled. And ordinary things become beautifully poetic.

Every story needs an element of suspense - or it's lousy.

Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done.

The Sistine Chapel is an extraordinary work of education - it lays out all the early books of the Bible.

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

'The Wall' is a reaction to 'Edge of Tomorrow,' where I was like, 'I don't need time travel and aliens to take a hero and pin them down in an impossible situation. I can do it in a much simpler way.' And that was 'The Wall.'

But one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made.

The term 'new queer cinema' and the films of mine that were associated with that term are from a very, very different time, one almost entirely defined by the AIDS era. It was a very different social and cultural regard for the lives, the experiences, the worth of gay people.

My zombies will never take over the world because I need the humans. The humans are the ones I dislike the most, and they're where the trouble really lies.

Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.

Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.

Even before 'Moon,' I did a short film called 'Whistle,' and it had a lot of the things that I thought I would need to be able to do on a feature film: I shot on location, there was special FX work, there was stunt work, we used squibs, I shot on 35 mm film.

My ideas tend to be either really big in terms of like, the logistics, or really small.

I've often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it's inside a frame.

I think when people think of Pompeii, they think it was just destroyed by the volcano. Yes, it was the eruption of the volcano that eventually caused the pyroclastic surge that swept over Pompeii and destroyed it for good. But also, they had to face the effects of a very extreme earthquake and a tidal wave that swept in from the Bay of Naples.

I think it is very important that films make people look at what they've forgotten.

I'm very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.

There's the right person, or right people, for each other. There is that order that's searching to be found but, I think, it's not as if everything is going to be automatic. So, people could really be meant for each other and its goes awry; or they could have to learn or develop and grow up together. Grow to be right together.

If you love someone, you love someone. It doesn't matter; age, colour, c'mon!

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.

Music - it's motivational and just makes you relax.

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.

What's a bigger mystery box than a movie theater? You go to the theater, you're just so excited to see anything - the moment the lights go down is often the best part.

If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

I think it's in our nature to try to get beyond that next horizon. I think that when we, as a species, are scratching that itch, we're actually following an evolutionary compulsion that is wired into us. I think good things come of it.

For better or worse, I refuse to live my life with regret. Sometimes, I'll look back on my past mistakes with fondness. But I never wished I wouldn't have made them. That's why I don't like re-takes.

You just have to be classy at the end of the day. That doesn't mean you can't go with a midnight blue tux. And if you can find a deep red tux that looks classy and classic, I think you can pull it off.

It's a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

I never considered myself a lucky person. I'm the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am.

My parents used to talk about Sergio Leone films a lot. And I got really into them. I love Clint Eastwood. I love the camera angles. I love the music.

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.

I'm curious. Period. I find everything interesting. Real life. Fake life. Objects. Flowers. Cats. But mostly people. If you keep your eyes open and your mind open, everything can be interesting.

Adolescence is a time in which you experience everything more intensely.

Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love.

Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.

Film can do lots of things: It can produce alternative ideas, ask questions, just record the reality of what's happening, it can analyze what's happening. Of course, most commercial films are controlled by big corporations who have an interest in not doing those films.

Is someone different at age 18 or 60? I believe one stays the same.