Wong Kar-wai

“Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things that we get, but not the things we wish we had.”

Sergio Leone

“In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life in jeeps and upset all my dreams.”

Shôhei Imamura

“I show true things using fictional techniques but maintaining truthfulness — that's where my approach differs from Ozu. He wanted to make film more aesthetic. I want to make it more real. He aspired toward a cinematic nirvana. When I was his assistant, I was very opposed to him, but now, whilst still not liking his films, I'm much more tolerant. As for me, I'd like to destroy this premise that cinema is fiction.”

Kiyoshi Kurosawa

“I don’t start with a philosophical or thematical approach. Instead I often start with a genre that’s relatively easy to understand and then explore how I want to work in that genre.”

Wes Anderson

“I know that feeling of looking back and thinking, that part I'd like to fix. So I obsessively try not to compromise.”

Seijun Suzuki

“I was never rebellious, I was just mischievous!”

Paul Thomas Anderson

“I'll rebel against powers and principalities, all the time. Always, I will.”

Yasujirô Ozu

“I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others… For me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength.”

Kenji Mizoguchi

“You must put the odor of the human body into images...describe for me the implacable, the egoistic, the sensual, the cruel...there are nothing but disgusting people in this world.”

Michael Mann

“I cannot just make a film and walk away from it. I need that creative intimacy, and quite frankly, the control to execute my visions, on all my projects.”

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Ingmar Bergman

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

David Lynch

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

Christopher Nolan

“I think audiences get too comfortable and familiar in today's movies. They believe everything they're hearing and seeing. I like to shake that up.”

David Fincher

“I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about JAWS is that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.”

Stanley Kubrick

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

Jean-Pierre Melville

“I believe that you must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage.”

Takashi Miike

“I don't think about the audience, I don't think about what makes them happy, because there's no way for me to know. They think of the audience as a mass, but in fact every person in the audience is different. So entertainment for everyone doesn't exist.”

John Carpenter

“In France, I'm an auteur; in Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain, a genre film director; and, in the USA, a bum.”

Martin Scorsese

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