American Director Quotes

The interesting part about making these films is that it's half directing, and half really being a leader, because you have such little time to shoot such a big concept. It's really like a war against time, and your crew is your platoon. You're going as hard and as fast as you can to try to get everything on screen.

But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you'll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness.

I look at my roommates who are so proud of me that it makes me proud.

Adriana Trigiani

I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

Francis Collins

More souls become casualties of war than physical bodies. War is a soul-shattering experience for the innocent.

I'll make it. I won't die. I've got too much I have to do to let myself die.

My happiest childhood memories are of times in our backyard. My mother had an old clothesline that hung out in front. It seemed like it stretched a mile long, and I loved sitting in the sun while she hung clothes.

The more time you have to think things through, the more you have to screw it up.

The history of each and every territory is written in the blood of those who died trying to fulfill the aspirations of their ambitious leaders.

As to the issues on which we part ways with the Committee, I have already stated that our reviews indicate that the detention and interrogation program produced useful intelligence that helped the United States thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. But let me be clear. We have not concluded that it was the use of EITs (Enhanced interrogation techniques) within that program that allowed us to obtain useful information from detainees subjected to them. The cause and effect relationship between the use of EITs and useful information subsequently provided by the detainee is, in my view, unknowable.

John O. Brennan

I grew up in the Valley, and I didn't know any of our neighbors. I think when you grow up like that, there's always sort of a fantasy of a place where everybody knew each other, and you had that safe sort of feeling.

Amy Sherman-Palladino

Don't you get it? It's the end of the world! That's exactly when you fall in love. When else?

In 2004, I joined my father, John Kerry, on the trail in his bid for the United States presidency.

Alexandra Kerry

It was never all in the script. If it were, why make the movie?

In movies you can shoot a guy 3,000 times and get a 'PG-13', but if you say the 'F' word twice it's automatically an 'R'. I'll let that be its own comment.

[It's a] really smart, faithful adaptation of the book. The book is such a tight page-turner… The character I play is an extreme guy… He's a killer. He wants to be Jesse James. He grew up watching cowboy and Indian movies and wants to be that. Then he meets Mickey Rourke's character, who's named The Black Bird and he wants to partner up with him and be a criminal and kill people. He's a psychotic and very bad guy… The thing about him is, he's not the bad killer, the kind of guy that sits and stews and then has these rageful outbursts. He is this extreme extrovert who never shuts up and tells you ridiculously tall tales about himself and mythologizes everything… Hyperactive, hyper, hyper guy wearing cowboy boots.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

We want to make things. We want to make things with our hands. We crave it. It sparks something in us, feeds our urge to create. That's why were here.
The future will be what we choose to build. We choose to build what we believe in. It's always been that way. A small group of people choose to believe in something, and then they make it so. In that order. They choose to believe in something, and then they make it so. That's the power of makers — the power to choose a new future, by believing, and making.

Regina E. Dugan

The Hebrew Bible, as a document, displays an astonishing lack of textual self-consciousness. It alleges to know what God thinks, but it does not know itself. It is not aware that it is called the Hebrew Bible. … Jews and Christians have venerated an unself-conscious artifact, one whose embarrassing gaps in self-knowledge have always had to be filled in by later interpreters.

Jacques Berlinerblau

You know what intimacy is? It's into-me-you-see... it's allowing someone to know who you are when you have all these defenses to keep them from knowing.

Man, I ain't poor. Look, I give away stuff to the Salvation Army. You can't give nothing away to Salvation Army if you poor.

Charles Burnett (director)

Love is the most important ingredient to any meaningful relationship. It is fundamental to true significance. Your quality of life is directly tied to the amount of love flowing in you and through you to others. Though it's often overlooked, love is infinitely more valuable than riches, fame, and honor. They will pass away, but love remains. You can be fulfilled without these, but not without love.

Films don't cause violence, people do. Violence defines our existence. To shield oneself is more dangerous than trying to reflect it.

Kathryn Bigelow

When a poor man, hungry and unseeing because his eyesight is failing, grabs me and starts begging, I feel the Nazi in myself. I abhor this man, and I want him to keep his hands off me.

We're not gay!
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Actors, who should pride themselves on their singularity, are forever trying to be someone else. It isn't necessary for you, the actor, to like yourself— self-love isn't easy to come by for most of us— but you must learn to trust who you are. There is no one else like you.

Michael Shurtleff