Rian Johnson

“Dialogue is something I really enjoy; in some ways I feel like I enjoy it too much and that's one thing I've been trying to work on as a writer, not saying everything with dialogue and trying to pull back on it.”

Harmony Korine

“What I remember myself from films, and what I love about films, is specific scenes and characters.”

Aki Kaurismäki

“Cinema is dead. It died 1962, I think it was in October!”

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.”

François Ozon

“I think cinema has to deal with desire. In the cinema, you are with a big screen, it is dark, and you watch some images, like a fantasy, so I think it is important for you to feel desire for what you see.”

Bernardo Bertolucci

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

Francis Ford Coppola

“I'm in a unique situation. I'm like now an elderly retired guy who made a lot of money, and now I can just, instead of playing golf, I can make art films.”

Jeff Feuerzeig

Michael Haneke

“Every film is manipulative, raping the viewer. So the question is: Why do I rape the viewer?”

Claire Denis

“Even if it's the dream of a voyage, I think it was very important for me that the film offer the two sides of the globe.”

Vincent Gallo

“I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

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

Philippe Garrel

“Cinema is Freud plus Lumière.”

Hal Hartley

“Despite the fact that I love story, character and dialogue, when I isolate the primary elements of film I find photography, movement and sound recording — in that order. Only then do I consider dramatic action. Film is essentially graphic for me.”

Gus Van Sant

“I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.”

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.”

Stanley Kubrick

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

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.”

Mike Leigh

“The whole thing about making films in an organic film location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across”

Jean-Luc Godard

“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order. ”