Quotes by Directors

These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear. Impugn a man's character, and everything that man does is made to seem underhanded, suspect, fraught with double motives.
Paul Auster
Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.
Paul Auster
To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.
Bruce Lee
Shit. The mind gets up to funny tricks, doesn't it? Shadows grow faces.
Stephen King
The last time I saw Paris.Her heart was warm and gay.
Oscar Hammerstein II
I'm saying the American way is to overcome, to conquer, to come out on top. And we do it by spending and eating and screwing our women harder than anyone else. That's all I'm saying.
Neil LaBute
The obsession with the afterlife is born of a panic at not having memories of a before-life.
Dean Cavanagh
If you join the rat race — you're in the race of rats.
Bertolt Brecht
What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.
Stephen King
c.t“So, hunny, don’t waste your time trying to label or define me…’cause I’m not what I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago. I’m all of that and then some. And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it.
George C. Wolfe
Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.
Stephen King
Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theatre, standing there in the dark, when all of a sudden I feel one of 'em tug at my sleeve, whispers, "Trudy look!" I said, "Yeah, goosebumps. You definitely got goosebumps. You like the play that much?" They said it wasn't the play that gave 'em goosebumps, it was the audience!I'd forgot to tell them to watch the play; they'd been watching the audience! Yeah, to see a group of people sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying at the same things...well that just knocked 'em out! They said, "Trudy, the play was soup, the audience, art."So they're taking goosbumps back with 'em into space. Goosebumps! Quite a souvenir. I like to think of them out there in the dark, watching us. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll laugh. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll cry. And maybe, one day we'll do something so magnificent, the whole universe will get goosebumps.
Jane Wagner
JD/Dr Cox: The second you start blaming yourself for people's deaths, there's no coming back.
Bill Lawrence
I pictured love as a big hairy giant with a dead fish in his mouth. Grizzly bear claws and his heart half out of his chest cause it’s too big and the lungs have to fit. He never stops walking. Over mountains. Through the desert. On top of icy lakes. Past huge cities. And he hunts and kills for you and always comes back with plenty to eat.
Adam Rapp
Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.
Stephen King
The Plutocracy’s insatiable hunger for pixelated information is enough to put a bulimic Pac-Man to shame
Dean Cavanagh
Deciding what to read is also a matter of filtering.
Jean-Claude Carrière
Moshe was an Israeli with an ear-slitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness.
Alex Garland
The most valuable gift I ever received was the gift of insecurity my father left us. My mother's love might not have prepared me for life the way my father's departure did. He forced us out on the road where we had to earn our bread.
Lillian Gish
In a professional once engaged the performance of the job comes first.
Garson Kanin
Work is more fun than fun.
Noël Coward
Amateurs hope. Professionals work.
Garson Kanin
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
David Hare
Even the most respectable woman has a complete set of clothes in her wardrobe ready for a possible abduction.
Sacha Guitry
Retirement must be wonderful. I mean you can suck in your stomach for only so long.
Burt Reynolds
Is sex dirty? Only if it is done right.
Woody Allen
The number of people who will not go to a show they do not want to see is unlimited.
Oscar Hammerstein
War is like love it always finds a way.
Bertolt Brecht
I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.
Nora Ephron
When praying does no good insurance does help.
Bertolt Brecht
I like terra firma - the more firma the less terra.
George S. Kaufman
Better to be king for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime.
Robert De Niro
I thank you for not snoring.
Marlon Brando
Good heavens television is something you appear on you don't watch.
Noël Coward
Success is like a liberation or the first phase of a love affair.
Jeanne Moreau
I don't think success is harmful as so many people say. Rather I believe it indispensible to talent: if for nothing else than to increase the talent.
Jeanne Moreau
The best thing that can come with success is the knowledge that it is nothing to long for.
Liv Ullmann
Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.
Frederick B. Wilcox
Many people have the ambition to succeed they may even have a special aptitude for their job. And yet they do not move ahead. Why? Perhaps they think that since they can master the job there is no need to master themselves.
John Stevenson
Golf is like a love affair: if you don't take it seriously it's no fun if you do take it seriously it breaks your heart.
Arnold Daly
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam I looked into the soul of the boy next to me.
Woody Allen
Great sport begins at a point where it has ceased to be healthy.
Bertolt Brecht
I don't believe in God. Just try getting a plumber on the weekend.
Woody Allen
If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card you don't have a clear idea.
David Belasco
My advice about acting? Speak clearly don't bump into people and if you must have motivation think of your pay packet on Friday.
Noël Coward
I take a simple view of living. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.
Sir Laurence Olivier
If there is reincarnation I'd like to come back as Warren Beatty's fingertips.
Woody Allen
Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.
Woody Allen
Sex - the poor man's polo.
Clifford Odets
I never really address myself to any image anybody has of me. That's like fighting with ghosts.
Sally Field
I am learning that if I just go on accepting the framework for life that others have given me if I fail to make my own choices the reason for my life will be missing. I will be unable to recognize that which I have the power to change.
Liv Ullmann
Being sorry for myself is a luxury I can't afford.
Stephen King
Oh I'm so inadequate. And I love myself!
Meg Ryan
I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami but salami is salami.
Stephen King
One's self-image is very important because if that's in good shape then you can do anything or practically anything.
Sir John Gielgud
The big gap between the ability of actors is confidence.
Kathleen Turner
It isn't important to come out on top what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.
Bertolt Brecht
A sobering thought: what if right at this very moment I am living up to my full potential?
Jane Wagner
People remain what they are even when their faces fall to pieces.
Bertolt Brecht
If there are two hundred people in a room and one of them doesn't like me I've got to get out.
Marlon Brando