Quotes by Film Directors - Page 12

As inexplicable as the accidents that set it off, our imagination is a crucial privilege. I've tried my whole life simply to accept the images that present themselves to me without trying to analyze them. I remember when we were shooting That Obscure Object of Desire in Seville and I suddenly found myself telling Fernando Rey, at the end of a scene, to pick up a big sack filled with tools lying on a bench, sling it over his shoulder, and walk away. The action was completely irrational, yet it seemed absolutely right to me. Still, I was worried about it, so I shot two versions of the scene: one with the sack, one without. But during the rushes the following day, the whole crew agreed that the scene was much better with the sack. Why? I can't explain it, and I don't enjoy rummaging around in the cliches of psychoanalysis.

I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.

A life spent waiting for your paycheck, measured out in work hours...A lifetime spent buying everything retail while selling oneself wholesale - L'amour Existe (1960)

It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.

...because there's a secret order. The books, you can't place them random. The other day I put Cervantes next to Tolstoj.And I thought, if close to Anna Karenina we have Don Quixote, sure the latter will do his best to save her.

Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.

Spoil all the walls with sellotape marks.

Like it or not, a caterpillar must first live as a chrysalis before becoming a butterfly. Maybe I remember those days because I am going through a chrysalis stage.

Always remember, your focus determines your reality.

My name is Jimmy,but my friends just call methe hideous penguin boy.

I, too, head for the Baths of Caracalla,thinking—with my old, magnificentprivilege of thinking…(And let there still be a god in me that thinks,lost, weak, and childish,yet whose voice is so humanit is almost a song.) Oh, to leavethis prison of poverty!To be free of the yearningthat makes these ancient nights so splendid!He who knows yearning, and he who does not,have something in common: man’s desires are humble.

You see me in my most virile moment when you see me doing what I do. When I am directing a special energy comes upon me. ... It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive. It is like having sex.

A man with no enemies is a man with no character.

I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

What is this film (Mirror) about?It is about a Man. No, not the particular man whose voice we hear from behind the screen, played by Innokentiy Smoktunovsky. It's a film about you, your father, your grandfather, about someone who will live after you and who is still "you". About a Man who lives on the earth, is a part of the earth and the earth is a part of him, about the fact that a man is answerable for his life both to the past and to the future. You have to watch this film simply, and listen to the music of Bach and the poems of Arseniy Tarkovsky; watch it as one watches the stars, or the sea, as one admires a landscape. There is no mathematical logic here, for it cannot explain what man is or what is the meaning of his life. (Sculpting in Time)

Like a flame burning away the darknessLife is flesh on bone convulsing above the ground.

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new film, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.

All you need for a movie is a gun and a cat.

It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive. It is like having sex.

My main problem with cops is that they do what they're told. They say 'Sorry mate, I'm just doing my job' all the fucking time.

The internet is now a forum for public prosecution.