Noah Baumbach

“If I had to sell Life Aquatic to a producer, well, I wouldn't say it's like an Éric Rohmer film under water.”

Peter Greenaway

“I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realizing all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.”

Lars von Trier

“I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.”

Stephen Daldry

“One of the great things about directors is how collegial we feel with each other. We share huge amounts - I get other directors in to see my work all the time and they do the same with me. It's a very warm and generous group of people.”

Michael Haneke

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

Matthew Barney

“A lot of my work has to do with not allowing my characters to have an ego in a way that the stomach doesn't have an ego when it's wanting to throw up. It just does it.”

Stanley Kubrick

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

Xavier Dolan

Julie Taymor

Sofia Coppola

“Perhaps it makes sense that a woman whose earliest memory was on the set of Apocalypse Now would grow up to direct a dark fable about five adolescent girls who unapologetically and unceremoniously kill themselves...”

Naomi Kawase

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.”

Pedro Almodóvar

“I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.”

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.”

Woody Allen

“Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”

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.”

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.”

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.”