Todd Solondz

“Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can’t celebrate humanity but I’m not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.”

Bent Hamer

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.”

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.”

Harmony Korine

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

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.”

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.”

Ethan Coen

“We create monsters and then we can't control them. ”

Dagur Kári

“I am fascinated by the idea of taking every scene as a film and making every scene as good as you want the film to be. I hate to shoot a scene where a guy walks out the door and takes a bus just to show that he takes the bus because this frame can never have the potential of becoming a great scene. I try to treat every scene as it were the only scene.”

Aki Kaurismäki

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

Gus Van Sant

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

Joel Coen

“The characters are the result of two things-first, we elaborate them into fairly well-defined people through their dialogue, then they happen all over again, when the actor interprets them. ”

Michel Gondry

“Every great idea is on the verge of being stupid.”

Jim Jarmusch

“I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are. ”

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...”

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.”

David Lynch

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

Richard Linklater

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

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.”