Top 1200 Directing Movies Quotes & Sayings

I enjoy editing when I'm directing, but when someone else is directing, that's their film to cut.

For me the dream is the freedom to make all the crazy ideas I have in my head into movies. I truly love directing and I think it is a privilege to have this as an occupation.

Very quickly I realized that directing is a combination of things: It's visual, it's directing the actors, it's telling a story. And people don't always mention this part of directing, but it's also knowing how to really edit something into something that makes sense.

Directing movies is the best job there is, that's all. I can hardly say a word after that. It's just a great job.

My dad's a prominent theatre director in Toronto, so I grew up in that world, directing and producing theater since I was a teenager. I always loved movies but they seemed too complicated until I got a job as an assistant on a movie-of-the-week and the technical process became demystified, like peeking behind a magician's curtain. Not long after that I switched to movies and never looked back.

I think if more women had been directing when I was a child, I probably would have gone for directing first. But, as a child, all I wanted to do was make movies.

I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.

I see myself directing, writing, doing my own TV shows and movies.

I watched a lot of silent movies. It's a very specific way of writing, which is more of a challenge than the directing. You have to describe images. It's easier to shoot them.

One of the reasons I became a writer is that, unlike starting a band, directing movies, or acting in a theatrical production, you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself.

Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama.

For a lot of my childhood, I didn't want to direct movies because I didn't really know what directing was.

A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.

I'll say this: I think from a directing standpoint, 'Loving' is my most accomplished film. Strictly from a technical, directing point of view.

I always say, 'I love producing, but directing is my passion,' and for a while, I had to produce to support my directing habit.

If there's specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. It's irrelevant who or what directed a movie, the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don't. There should be more women directing; I think there's just not the awareness that it's really possible. It is.

I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated.

I think in the old days, films really went for the shock, with the blood and guts, but movies are getting better. The writing and directing have improved a lot, because the audience demands it.

I love being a writer-director. I couldn't imagine directing without writing it. You have to write and tell your stories - that's what directing is to me.

Being a father is like directing Alien or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's much more difficult than directing an episode of TV. Also, directing a show or movie lasts a few months at most, parenting lasts for decades.

To me, directing movies is just that. It's a need to question myself and set the things that disturb me on the table.

You can read all the books you want, watch all the movies and get all of the advice, but until you're actually in directing, in the hot seat, that's when you find out what you're made of. Also, you just learn so much from doing.

I think the big evolutionary step for me is directing my own movies.

I loved acting, and then acting led to writing, and writing led to directing, and directing lead to five movies, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.

Movies alone have the hideous capacity to do everything for you. So in directing movies, you have to figure how to leave things out - because when you leave things out, you evoke the imaginative participation of the audience.

I don't direct so that I can have an identity and so I can go on to CGI movies. I had a big identity as an actor, and that's not what I'm looking for from directing. Directing is a whole different goal.

One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there's no confusion about who's to blame: you are.

For me, the real goal is to integrate. The thing that I'm most happy with is the fact that I've been able to keep doing all of it - to keep writing, and to keep acting in movies, and to keep acting on the stage, to keep directing plays. I find that they feed each other, and that I learn about acting from directing and I learn about writing from acting.

All these teachers and [screenwriting] books mean you see movies that have been worked over by more committees wielding more rules, that all originality and authorship is lost. That's why you're seeing superstars like Brad Pitt in THE FIGHT CLUB and Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA. They're desperately searching for people writing and directing off-formula movies.

Film directing has perfected my theater directing. I think when I first started directing, a lot of my stuff was very lateral; I was afraid to have the actors' backs turned away, afraid to put them too far upstage, and I think once I did more things with film, I got more interested in composition.

I can make a better living as an actor than I can as a director. Though I certainly would prefer to be directing movies.

I loved theater and went to Circle in the Square's post-graduate program for two years and studied acting and directing and I loved it. I loved acting and directing - I really like directing a lot. Some days I think maybe someday I'll go back and direct something.

For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.

I was into writing and directing. I was a bit of a reluctant actor. I would always ask friends to shoot or direct their movies, but then they'd want me to be in them.

The timing for directing is usually because it takes that long to develop a piece and then do pre-production and then post-production. It takes at least a couple of years. I prefer directing to doing other things. Directing and writing seem to be infinitely more creative

I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.

Art is manipulation, the management of material, the directing of fate... Who does that directing?

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

Directing her was like directing Lassie. You need 14 takes to get each one of them right.

I'm directing the Sky show. I'm not going to be in it. I'm just writing and directing it. So that'll satisfy that part of my brain.

Directing Marilyn Monroe was like directing Lassie. You needed fourteen takes to get each one of them right.

I think once we started directing separately - we each have different kinds of interests now, and the kinds of movies we want to do. I wouldn't hold your breath for that one.

Commercial directing felt like a very natural transition from my comedy, sketch, music video directing experience.

I've been doing second unit for years, which is sort of like directing mini movies. Now that I'm directing entire films, it's really just more of everything. There are a lot more questions that need answers.

I would consider directing. I think directing myself would be tough, but I'm definitely interested in directing. I might start off directing a play before I move to a film.

I was directing as a kid in movies, and that was always my strongest interest. When I was under contract at Universal, I conned an editing room out of them and spent my money to rent a camera and shoot film and make some movies.

I think, obviously, everyone has a lot of favorite movies, but I really for some reason just love Quentin Tarantino's writing and directing style.

With movies, so much of it is, 'Who is the human being that is going to be directing it?' Because it is their medium. In a way, you are serving the director, and when it is someone that you feel you can have a lot of confidence in, it can make a big difference.

I like writing and directing. I enjoy telling stories, and I think it's born in a comedian to end up directing.

I have a suspicion, because if you look at the whole, all the [Star Wars ] movies, the backlog of every one of these movies, there's a lot of great stuff, but one might not be not as good with the writing in this or the acting in that or the directing in that, this has great actors, great directors, great script, and I really feel like we're gonna make the best one [movie with Young Han Solo].

My approach to directing is to not do very much directing. I'm mainly interested in what the creative group individually and together are thinking.

I have great people surrounding me and helping me out. I'm totally in love with directing movies and I hope to do more of it.

Directing non-actors is difficult. Directing actors in a foreign language is even more difficult. Directing non-actors in a language that you yourself don't understand is the craziest thing you can possibly think of.

I think directing and writing are very different jobs. Obviously, directing is a more social and managerial job. The other thing about directing is that it's a very, very pragmatic job, and writing isn't.

I don't see myself directing things I don't write because, to me, directing was just an extension of the writing process.

I hope always to be busy, even if only directing an orchestra in the pit. However, I should prefer to produce movies or be the directing head of a radio corporation.

I love directing. I love creating things that I don't necessarily even have to be in. I like creating worlds. So I'm getting into writing movies and selling movies and television shows and creating worlds that then get to live beyond me.

I think I have much more appreciation for directing and movies overall versus a performance or an actor. Their body of work is more interesting.

I would recommend that any writer get off their ass at least once and just try it. Directing is a completely different set of muscles. It also affects your writing because, once you start directing, you tend to write your scripts with directing in mind.

It would be a great vacation to act in a movie if I weren't directing it. But to do it while you're directing interferes with your concentration, and I wouldn't do that again.