20th-century Director Quotes

There are always motherfuckers queuing up to pull you down to earth. But we must fly occasionally, we all have to feel that joy or we are nothing.

I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding in this great adventure in the world of Aids than I ever did in the cut-throat, competitive world in which I spent my life.

Anthony Perkins

The secret to staying married for 33 years:

Well, we never wanted to get divorced at the same time.

Listen. This will probably be the worst pain you have ever experienced in your life. Everything in your body will tell you to let go, but you have to hold on. You have to hold on, Maddy, no matter what. No matter how badly it hurts. You can never, never let go. Can you do that for me?

I am the unknown Will,
The Anger that threatens glory and ruin:
Lord of Storms am I,
in heaven high and caverns deep.
I am the Father of the War,
Odin for you, Wotan for him,
Wayfarer, Wanderer, beggar, king,
numen, genius, strength and ring.

I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a film-maker... But it is not an art form, because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

If you understand comedy, you understand life. Drama, death, tragedy – everybody has these. But with humour you've got all these, and the antidote. You have found the answer. It doesn't follow that because you are a good comedy writer, you're a happy fellow. I've got one of the most miserable faces in the world. I am only happy when I am working. If I'm not working, I get screwed up because my time is going, my life is slipping by.

The internet is not necessarily a golden goose yet, but we must fight to keep it safe, keep it level, keep it democratic, keep it open, keep it diverse so that when it becomes the golden goose, we independent artists can share and maybe at least get a wing or a thigh, even if we don't get the breast meat.

Am I not a man? And is not a man stupid? I'm a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything, the full catastrophe.

Michael Cacoyannis

Soundbite and slogan, strapline and headline: at every turn we meet hyperbole. The soaring inflation of the English language is more urgently in need of control than the economic variety.

I've been called a termagent, but people BELIEVE in me. I'm a BIG personality.

Taubie Kushlick

I'm sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in [the] proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It's not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.

Time marches on and eventually you realize it is marching across your face.

Robert Harling (writer)

There are points where you worry that you might be putting too much in and alienating the audience. But, funnily enough, some of those fears aren't correct.

Christopher Nolan

We don't torture people. Let me say that again to you. We don't torture people, OK.

When one is undone—sprawled across the cold tile of a public bathroom in a pool of one's own vomit, or shivering in the back of a taxi in a pair of urine-soaked skinny jeans with no money for cab fare and a dead cell phone battery—much like a wobbly toddler or an unhinged politician, one immediately looks for someone else to blame. God. Your parents. Ex-girlfriends. Undocumented immigrants. Marvin in Human Resources. China.

I live cinema. I chose the cinema when I was very young, sixteen years old, and from then on my memories virtually coincide with the history of the cinema... I'm not a director with a personal style, I am simply cinema. I have grown up with and through cinema; everything that I've had in the way of education has been through the cinema; insofar as I'm interested in images, in books, in music, it's all due to the cinema.

The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.

All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance.

François Truffaut

Striker: Surely you can't be serious.
Dr Rumack: I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.

I have become post facto a representative of the country. So if you ask, "Is Mermaids a Canadian film?" — it has become one. It has become a means whereby people characterize Canadian film. I think in the creation of Mermaids, I did see it in political terms. I thought of the underdog. Canada is not a superpower by any means. It's very quietly, comfortably democratic, but it's plagued by a sense of inferiority.

Patricia Rozema

Here's the first major lesson: Writing is not an activity. It's not something you sit down at the keyboard, and just start doing. That's called 'typing.' Typing is an activity... Writing is a process. And if you start thinking of it as a process, life gets so much easier.

The important thing is to use the role as a trampoline, a chance to study and play with what is behind our masks. Creativity, especially where acting is concerned, Is boundless sincerity, yet disciplined.

Jerzy Grotowski

When your time is up, your time is up, and you've just got to pray to God that you've done something worthwhile with your life.

When anything becomes the fashion, that's the time to put a bomb under it.

Joan Littlewood