Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Directors - Page 20

Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.

When you first hear Mozart's music, your first impression is that it's very alive, but if you peel away the layers, you can hear sorrow and sadness behind it, and that's what I try to be: multi-layered.

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

Film is an emotional medium; it's not a logical medium. It's not an intellectual medium, so every decision you make as a filmmaker and an actor has to be emotional in some way, even in the rejection of logic.

Having parents who are chicken sexers - I had trouble explaining that to kids at school!

I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy.

I've noticed with my own kids, it seems like they have so much more homework than I did.

Photography was a way for me to freeze time and to capture the moments that were happy and healthy. I saw a photo as a way to go back to a memory if I ever needed to.

It's a leap of faith doing any serialised storytelling.

I'm like my zombies. I won't stay dead!

Stories are important, but I'm really into characters, and if you can give birth to a good one, that's true success.

I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.

For me, my country comes first. Nothing else matters but my country. I always felt that the best way to express your patriotism is to spread love, and that's all I ever tried to do through my work and my cinema.

Seeing 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' was an extraordinary experience because it made me realise that all the biblical stories and images I'd ignored as a child had sunk in by osmosis. I saw that my childhood was deeply rooted inside me.

In 'Purab Aur Paschim,' there's one of the nicer patriotic scenes which is patriotic without going jingoistic. There's a scene set in a rotating restaurant, where Pran, who has left India, is completely running India down and Manoj Kumar is taking up for India. And there's that song 'Jab Zero Diya.'

Don't be told something is impossible. There's always a way.

Horror film fans are pretty starved for quality. If you do something thoughtful or if you make something good, they're so thankful for it.

I like the probability of the impossible.

Man has fallen victim to seduction since times immemorial.

In documentary filmmaking, there's a tradition of telling stories about victims. We often do that from a very patronizing place, but mostly we do it from a very selfish place, to reassure ourselves that our lives are in sympathy and solidarity with the victims.

I often think to myself, at the end of an interesting life it's maybe not such a bad thing to spend your last days with your friends sitting by the blue, blue ocean reliving the story of your life while sitting in the dangerous sun.

Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.

Akira Kurosawa, David Lean and Alfred Hitchcock were the main inspirations for 'Samurai Jack,' along with a lot of '70s cinema.

I believe in free education, free healthcare. But I do not believe in equality.

When critics sit in judgment it is hard to tell where justice leaves off and vengeance begins.

The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'

I'm anti-verite. I think the verite style is a completely false thing. Most things are false to arrive at a truth; verite is falsity without acknowledging its falsity.

I truly enjoy working with kids because they teach me something and it allows me to get in touch with few things that are a bit personal to me.

To me, what I realized when we were doing 'Spinal Tap' - and the four of us wrote that - is, really, the core of that is the relationship with the two guys who grew up together and that strain when the girlfriend comes in. If that wasn't there, it's a very different movie. Then it's just bumbling guys stumbling along.

I am hopeful that there are three or four Harvey Milks. It would be nice to have one in California and one in New York and one in Texas and Oklahoma-it would be fantastic. Maybe even one in Salt Lake City. I would like that.

I feel blessed and lucky with my family, not because of the privilege, of course, I'm grateful for that as well that we never wanted anything.

Making movies is a way of understanding myself and the world.

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.

Everybody's got one killer story. It doesn't take talent to tell that story, it just takes experience.

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

When you manage to express something with a look and the music instead of saying it with words or having the character speak, I think it's a more complete work.

I often wonder if I should adopt a cause to call my own or start tweeting inspirational messages. And when tragedy strikes and the world takes to social media, is it now my responsibility to respond with #RIPs and #prayfors?

In indies, life is very dark and realistic, and in mainstream films, the edges are all rounded off and very sentimentalized.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.

There's a big time influence Hrishikesh Mukherjee has always had on my work. I can watch 'Anand,' 'Golmaal' or 'Chupke Chupke' as many times as possible. I just really admire his kind of cinema.

Sometimes, we have to turn our camera to a mirror to shoot something, and people think, 'Oh, that's very stylish.' Yes it is, but at the same time, we did it because we are shooting in a very small space, and that was our only option.

I'm sad, upset, and disheartened with the trolling that happens on social media... At the end of the day, this whole homophobia is so disheartening and upsetting. And then they say, 'Why don't you speak about your sexuality? You could be iconic in this country.' But I don't want to be iconic anywhere. I want to live my life.

Good cinema is what we can believe, and bad cinema is what we can't believe.

I always get hats but never have the nerve to wear them. Hats are a thing that are really stylish, but you have to have the confidence to pull it off.

I like to keep my options open. I'm known for changing my mind.

Anybody who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I certainly would never read anything written by Kevin Smith.

I'm Godless. I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking.

See, most films are about achievers. You see a film like 'Bhaag Milkha Bhaag' or 'Dhoni.' Even 'Gandhi,' or the biopic on Lincoln. They end in triumph, on a high.

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

In Kurosawa's films, the tragedy is that this strong man was crushed by corruption or mistrust at the end.

You could make a film out of just about anything so long as there is a clear vision about the story.

I came across the Indonesian genocide in 2001, when I found myself making a film in a community of survivors. They were plantation workers, and it turned out they were struggling to organize a union.

Ordinary people can be very articulate and very eloquent.

Being healthy is not just about building a body: it is a lifestyle that manifests itself in your general outlook. It makes you more positive and optimistic and increases your energy level.

Whether in cave paintings or the latest uses of the Internet, human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.

My life has been a series of slightly happy accidents.

I saw Richard Linklater's film 'Slacker' for my twenty-first birthday. That was the moment when it all seemed possible. This guy gave me hope.