Movie Director Quotes

• I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.

  Wes Anderson

  Writing, Thinking, Design

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater.

  Roman Polanski

  Movie, Inspiring, Humorous

  "Values of the Wise: Aspiring to 'The Life of Value'". Book by Jason Merchey, 2004.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life.

  Jean-Luc Godard

  Art, Cinema, Film

  "Godard". Book by Richard Roud, 1970.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Being movie director you've got the art department, you've got the actors, you've got the camera department, you've got make-up and hair, and props. You've got your finger in all these pies, and you're making sure that everything cooks at the right temperature.

  Michael Fassbender

  Art, Pie, Hair

  "Michael Fassbender Talks Haywire, Twelve Years a Slave, Prometheus, and X-men: First Class Sequel". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. January 17, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Art, Twilight, Film Directing

  "The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography". Book by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Joan Tate, 1988.

  87 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the great things about being a director as a life choice is that it can never be mastered. Every story is its own kind of expedition, with its own set of challenges.

  Ron Howard

  Movie, Inspiring, Choices

  40 Copy quote

• A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Film Directing, Independent Filmmaking, Directors

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.

  James Cameron

  Inspirational, Motivational, Friends

  James Cameron, Brent Dunham (2012). “James Cameron: Interviews”, p.117, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  107 Copy quote

  Show source

• People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.

  Steven Spielberg

  Movie, Inspiring, Positivity

  "Science Fiction in Steven Spielberg's Suburbia". Interview with Chris Hodenfield, www.rollingstone.com. January 26, 1978.

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• My three Ps: passion, patience, perseverance. You have to do this if you've got to be a filmmaker.

  Robert Wise

  Patience, Perseverance, Passion

  46 Copy quote

• Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

  Alfred Hitchcock

  Drama, Writing, Life Is Short

  Francois Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Helen G. Scott (1985). “Hitchcock”, p.103, Simon and Schuster

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• People have forgotten how to tell a story.

  Steven Spielberg

  Film Directing, People, Directors

  "One! the Book about Everything and Nothing!: Stories from One Male to All of You". Book by Chimie (p. 85), November 23, 2011.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't.

  Jean-Luc Godard

  Art, Giving, Trying

  "Godard". Book by Richard Roud, 1970.

  99 Copy quote

  Show source

• People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.

  Ridley Scott

  Play, People, Looks

  12 Copy quote

• A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

  Alfred Hitchcock

  Movie, Art, Gambling

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  94 Copy quote

  Show source

• I steal from every single movie ever made. I love it - if my work has anything it's that I'm taking this from this and that from that and mixing them together. If people don't like that, then tough titty, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal; they don't do homages.

  Quentin Tarantino

  Motivational, Movie, Artist

  26 Copy quote

• I steal from every movie ever made.

  Quentin Tarantino

  Stealing, Made, Filmmaker

  25 Copy quote

• A Director Makes Only One Movie in His Life. Then He Breaks It Into Pieces and Makes It Again.

  Jean Renoir

  Movie, Inspiring, Film Directing

  Quoted in Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (1993)

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

  Jean-Luc Godard

  Movie, Order, Should Have

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  99 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies.

  Kathryn Bigelow

  Directors, Directing Movies, Gender

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Movie, Film Directing, Independent Filmmaking

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

  Martin Scorsese

  Movie, Gambling, Film Directing

  FaceBook post by Martin Scorsese from Jul 08, 2013

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's all just one film to me. Just different chapters.

  Robert Altman

  Movie, Inspiring, Different

  7 Copy quote

• The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting

  Brian De Palma

  Inspirational, Motivational, Mistake

  Brian De Palma, Laurence F. Knapp (2003). “Interviews”, p.60, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Films are always pretentious. There's nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.

  John Milius

  Movie, Inspiring, Film

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. May 07, 2003.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source