David Cronenberg

“Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing their whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.”

Éric Rohmer

“I do not say, I show. I show people who move and speak.”

Frank Lloyd

Otto Preminger

[Giving direction to a group of children on Exodus (1960)] "Cry, you little monsters!"

James Whale

“Hollywood is just too marvelous. One feels the footprints of all the immortals are here, but has a terrible feeling that they are in sand and won’t last when civilization comes this way.”

Paul Verhoeven

“People love seeing violence and horrible things. The human being is bad and he can't stand more than five minutes of happiness. Put him in a dark theater and ask him to look at two hours of happiness and he'd walk out or fall asleep.”

Charlie Chaplin

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

Michael Moore

“White people scare the crap out of me. ”

Andrei Tarkovsky

“Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.”

Federico Fellini

“What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one...”

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.”

Chuck Jones

[On one of his most famous characters] "The coyote is victimized by his own ineptitude. I never understood how to use tools and that's really the coyote's problem."

Tex Avery

“Let’s make some funny pictures.”

John Waters

“Some call me director, producer, filmmaker. I prefer to call myself pube-king.”

Jean Cocteau

“Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. ”

Roman Polanski

“You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.”

Tony Gatlif

“At the time, it was useless to use words to make the case for the gypsies, so I used music as the key.”

King Vidor

“My luck was my father not striking oil... we'd have been rich. I'd never have set out for Hollywood with my camera, and I'd have had a lot less interesting life.”

Mel Brooks

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

Cecil B. DeMille

“Creation is a drug I can't do without.”