Director Quotes

The 'human situation,' in all its guises, is what good films are all about, and technical skill counts for nothing if it is used only to manufacture films which have little to do with humanity.

My best friend Linda is leaving her husband just because he is unfaithful to her. That is no reason to leave the person. I feel like after that, you should stay with them and make sure that the rest of their life is sheer hell.

Human needs to go through the abyss of pains and loss, because the more we suffer-the better.

Merely adding up all U.S. forces and comparing them with Soviet Forces, actual or potential, present or future, does not really tell one very much.

Andrew W. Marshall

One problem with our democracy is that a rigid class and caste hierarchy coupled with gross gender inequality has kept large sections of our population traditionally without a voice. But having no voice does not mean having no brain! On the contrary the voiceless have much to say and we can learn so much from their ways of seeing and thinking. Feelings of humanity seem to survive much better amongst the powerless than among the affluent and powerful.

Anand Patwardhan

Writing is all about the preservation of your own voice. So if you give that voice away by guessing what you think and you think and you think as you go, you'll have less to say and then it'll go away completely!

It is because the old have forgotten life that they preach wisdom.

My mother, whom I love dearly, has continually revised my life story within the context of a complicated family history that includes more than the usual share of divorce, step-children, dysfunction, and obfuscation. I've spent most of my adult life attempting to deconstruct that history and separate fact from fiction.

Melissa Gilbert

Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.

I am that twentieth-century failure, a happy undersexed celibate.

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

The Troubles are a pigmentation in our lives here, a constant irritation that detracts from real life. But life has to do with something else as well, and it's the other things which are the more permanent and real.

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

Being a journalist, Hacker had no particular talent for reporting facts.

Voltaire was witty because he drank coffee. A conventional liquid stimulant.

Marcello Marchesi

I learned long ago to accept the fact that not everything I create will see the light of day.

What we've got here is failure to communicate.

Christian said he'd call the next day, but in boy time that meant Thursday.

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Lewis Allen (director)

Everything was in neon lights six feet tall: LUST, REVENGE, SEX.

Of the films of Cecil B. de mille

Mitchell Leisen

I always felt the world cannot fall apart as long as free men see the rainbow, feel the rain and hear the laugh of a child.

To the spectator, cricket is more a therapy than a sport. It is like watching fish dart about a pool.

There are some things which cannot be learned, though they can be studied. Among them are the laws of art—and the lawlessness of it, as well.

Josef von Sternberg

The intention of not only the screenwriter, but also the entire production staff, was to focus on how people would react if a creature such as Godzilla really did appear. What would the politicians do? How about the scientists? How would the military handle the situation? Given this, it was inevitable that the film would seem at least somewhat like a documentary.

"Republic" is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat. Same tightness a man gets when his baby makes his first step, or his boy first shaves, makes his first sound like a man. Some words can give you a feeling that makes your heart warm. "Republic" is one of those words.

James Edward Grant