Nicolas Roeg

“You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.”

Takeshi Kitano

“Sword fighting in film is not about how good the fighter is, but how good the actor receiving the blows is.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

Georg Wilhelm Pabst

“He knows how to create a strange world, whose elements are borrowed from daily life...His characters emerge like his own children, created from fragments of his own heart and mind.”

Elia Kazan

“I like directors who come on the set and create something that’s a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.”

Charlie Chaplin

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”

Fritz Lang

“I should say that I was a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or rarely, with my ears...to my constant regret.”

François Truffaut

“I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.”

Terry Gilliam

“You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.”

Martin Scorsese

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

Bernardo Bertolucci

“I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

“Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.”

Lino Brocka

Jan Švankmajer

“I never call myself an animated filmmaker because I am interested not in animation techniques or creating a complete illusion, but in bringing life to everyday objects.”

Jacques Tati

“Like a dancer learns to dance ... a visual comic learns to use his legs.”

George A. Romero

“If I fail, the film industry writes me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart.”

David Lynch

“I don't think about technique. The ideas dictate everything. You have to be true to that or you're dead.”

Peter Greenaway

“I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realizing all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.”

Billy Wilder

“If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.”

Luchino Visconti

“I took a round trip around Hollywood because I think it frightened me. I didn’t want to get burned in that glare.”