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Quotes by Director

"Maybe when I stop making movies, I'll understand my work better."

"It's the unusual leading man. Most of the Hollywood leading men are powerful and capable and strong, heroes. He has this vulnerability, he's fragile, he struggles to find a way to live from day to day that we can identify with, that we can understand."

"My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images."

"Don't get married to an actress because they're also actresses in bed."

"There are always at least five good films at the end of the year to get nominated, but generally speaking nowadays, it's more of the independent films that are recognized."

"We made connections between the monsters created by war and the monsters he created, the typical outcast that Whale was attracted to, and the monster in himself, that's inside all of us."
War,

"Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice."

"He looked like such a Republican. He dressed like Pee-Wee Herman. But had I known what he had done when I was reading about him, I might have thought different."

"Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature."

"Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking."

"My greatest thrill was the day Mad magazine spoofed 'Ghost.'"

"Cocteau is someone who has made such a profound impression on me that there's no doubt he's influenced every one of my films."

"Well, even to this day, if I smell a Big Mac, I'm like Pavlov's dog. My mouth starts watering immediately, like, 'Man, that is so good,' but I can't take a bite of it."

"First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct."

"I'm just generally hugely frustrated, I'm a very, very frustrated man. I'm just a ball of pent-up frustration."

"These wrestlers aren't organized. They have no union, no pension and no insurance. You meet wrestler after wrestler who sold out Madison Square Garden ten years ago, basically running on fumes today. There's a lot of drama there."

"When you're working with a smaller budget I suppose one of the things that has to be in your mind when you are writing is that you have to keep the characters down to a minimum."

"When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match."

"I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government."

"What I think is interesting is that the more you do, you have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can't do. And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches."

"After Lock, Stock, all these really nasty small town characters came knocking at my door trying to tell me stories, and somehow I ended up with this guy whose brother was feeding people to pigs, and that's what he did to get rid of people."

"I was speaking to Ridley Scott the other day and he makes a film every 18 months. He's amazing really."

"Dogs got personality. Personality goes a long way."

"As soon as you judge communication a little more rigorously, there is a possibility that the message will not be democratized. I have to say what I believe to be right. I have to spread out the statement among all the means of expression available to us at present."

"The language of the moment or, as it were, the language of the order in which we live, is the image. I felt that if I wanted to commune with the public, I should best do so through the language of image. It's a conscious embrace of a contradiction."

"The father's greatest folly is that he believes he can be a much more simple person than he is; he is not really able to deal with his own complexity as a human being."

"I watched a couple of really bad directors work, and I saw how they completely botched it up and missed the visual opportunities of the scene when we had put things in front of them as opportunities. Set pieces, props and so on."
Work,

"In the first years after the systemic transition, our screens showed American entertainment that had not been available before, or had been available only sporadically."

"I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood."

"I'd like to do a lot of different stuff. I think it's important as a creative person to keep challenging yourself and keep doing new stuff. If you end up trying to repeat yourself it's death. It just becomes boring and takes the passion out of it. You gotta find stories and characters that you really want to hang out with."

"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose."

"I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives."
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