David Lynch

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

Patrice Leconte

“You may think it’s very presumptuous, but I really hope that my movies are going to turn people into better people.”

Miloš Forman

“The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.”

Paul Auster

“Becoming a writer is not a "career decision" like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.”

Wayne Wang

“I am always on the lookout for genuine humanity between my characters, honest communication, although sometimes I can not say exactly what does that really mean. I can also hard to describe. In my films, as well as in real life, I am interested in simple interpersonal connections. ”

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”

Richard Linklater

“I've always liked the minds of criminals, they seem similar to artists. ”

Vittorio De Sica

“I've lost all my money on these films. They are not commercial. But I'm glad to lose it this way. To have for a souvenir of my life pictures like Umberto D. and The Bicycle Thief.”

Emir Kusturica

“What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in…”

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.”

Tim Burton

“I've always loved the idea of fairy tales, but somehow I never managed to completely connect with them. What interests me is taking those classic images and themes and trying to contemporize them a bit. I believe folk tales and fairy tales have some sort of psychological foundation that makes that possible.”

Giuseppe Tornatore

“From the moment I enter the movie theater and the lights go out and the first images come up on the screen, I’m very happy about the fact that that film exists and I feel a great warmth toward it – even if, in the end, it turns out that it’s not a particularly good film.”

Andrés Wood

Ken Loach

“A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage.”

Wim Wenders

“Any movie that has that spirit and says things can be changed is worth making. ”

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.”

Spike Jonze

“Being able to shoot on videos and commercials — just being on the set, with only a certain amount of time and shots and sequences to do in that amount of time, learning how to work with the crew the physical production and the limitations — is all good training.”

Sydney Pollack

“I don't value a film I've enjoyed making. If it's good, it's damned hard work.”

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.”

Ridley Scott

“People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at. ”