Don Hertzfeldt

“Some people can do great things with CG, but that world just doesn’t interest me or inspire me. I’ve never felt really creative or intuitive using software. I like paper and pens and paint. I need to angle real lights on my artwork and work with my hands and build props. Computers just take all that fun out of it.”

Oliver Stone

“I consider my films first and foremost to be dramas about individuals in personal struggles and I consider myself to be a dramatist before I am a political filmmaker.”

Walter Salles

“The necessity to conceptualize has to come very early on, and defining a vector of development for that film also at the beginning of the process will allow you much more freedom as you go along.”

Alexander Payne

“I thank you for this award, though I think there may be a problem with a world in which making small, human and humorous films is ‘an achievement.’ It should be the norm.”

Paul Greengrass

Alfonso Cuarón

“The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or bad movie, it's just to see what you learn for the next one.”

Alejandro González Iñárritu

“(On why did he not record an audio commentary for 21 Grams) I don't like them. I feel that if you have to explain something it loses strength. It's like a magician trying to explain his magic, in a way.”

Alfred Hitchcock

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

Darren Aronofsky

“To me, watching a movie is like going to an amusement park. My worst fear is making a film that people don't think is a good ride.”

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.”

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

“I wanted to make a fake Paris, a Paris of dreams, like in my head when I was twenty and I arrived in Paris for the first time. I wanted to avoid the bad things: traffic jams, dog shit on the street, the rain.”

Peter Jackson

“I don't quite know what an auteur is. I've never quite understood that term, because filmmaking is such a huge team effort.”

Guillermo del Toro

“I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue.”

Bong Joon-ho

“Human beings basically express their feelings in the same way. They feel the same feelings. If you look at two foreigners talking to each other, you soon can see if they are fighting, or are in love.”

Park Chan-wook

“The audience seems hazy to me, shrouded in a veil through which I can't see.”

Alejandro Amenábar

“I wouldn't say I'm a very controlling person. For instance, when I talk to the actors, I don't tell them exactly what I want because I want them to surprise me. I even encourage them to change some of the verses of the script if they need to.”

Akira Kurosawa

“Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied...that's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.”

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.”

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.”

Zhang Yimou

“To do art, one thing should always remember - subjects of people in misery have deep meanings.”