Apichatpong Weerasethakul

“I, as a filmmaker, treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters. I don't care if people are fond of them or despise them, as long as I created them with my best intentions and efforts.”

Andrzej Żuławski

“To please the majority is the requirement of the Planet Cinema. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t make a concession to viewers, these victims of life, who think that a film is made only for their enjoyment, and who know nothing about their own existence.”

Jon Jost

Michelangelo Antonioni

“Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.”

Luis Buñuel

“If someone were to tell me I had twenty years left, and ask me how I'd like to spend them, I'd reply 'Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.'”

John Waters

“Some call me director, producer, filmmaker. I prefer to call myself pube-king.”

Steve McQueen

“My influences come from real life. I’m not interested in cinema for cinema’s sake. I’m interested in life—what one does and how one interacts.”

Michael Mann

“I cannot just make a film and walk away from it. I need that creative intimacy, and quite frankly, the control to execute my visions, on all my projects.”

Chris Marker

“Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.”

Yasujirô Ozu

“I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others… For me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength.”

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.”

Gaspar Noé

“A lot of people cry at the end of the movie. Some people come out and smoke a cigarette. Some people go for a walk or a cigarette in the middle of the movie. Each person handles the movie as he wants...”

Jean-Luc Godard

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

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.”

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.”

David Lynch

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

Nicolas Roeg

“You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.”

Billy Wilder

“If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.”

Werner Herzog

“It is my duty to direct because the films might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.”

Steven Soderbergh

“To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.”