Charlie Chaplin

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

Billy Wilder

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

Michelangelo Antonioni

“Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.”

Quentin Tarantino

“I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience.”

Andrew Stanton

“A lot of people think if they make a computer-animated film, it's going to be a hit. I'm afraid we're going to see a glut of really bad films in the next couple of years.”

Josef von Sternberg

“I care nothing about the story, only how it is photographed and presented.”

Terrence Malick

“[On Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this would, among other things, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence, but still keep its dreamy quality.”

Howard Hawks

“I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move! ”

John Ford

“I hate the cinema. But I like making westerns.”

Ub Iwerks

Friz Freleng

“The only thing that saved me was that the people in charge there didn’t know any more about animation than I did.”

Alfred Hitchcock

“For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.”

Wolfgang Reitherman

“It was a romance from the start. The minute you know you can make a drawing move, the static drawing loses its appeal: movement is life. Animation represents the greatest breakthrough in 20th Century art.”

George Lucas

“If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.”

Steven Spielberg

“I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we're all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines. We're all gonna lose our jobs. We're all gonna be on the Internet trying to find an audience.”

John Lasseter

“From the beginning, I kept saying it’s not the technology that’s going to entertain audiences, it’s the story. The computer is a tool, and it’s in the service of the story.”

Frank Oz

“The biggest problems with movies are expectations.”

Jim Henson

“The Muppets transcend all age groups. Their satiric comment on society seems to delight all ages.”

Mel Brooks

“I cut my finger. That’s tragedy. A man walks into an open sewer and dies. That’s comedy.”

Stanley Kubrick

“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”