Ti West

“The independent world and the studio world are very different. The independent world is about, "Let's get this movie made because it's going to be awesome and we believe in it," and the studio world is about slow business decisions.”

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.”

David Wellington

William Lustig

“I had a passion. It came from passion, I didn't have some masterplan - it was totally organic.”

Sergio Martino

“It’s always been believed, incorrectly in my opinion, that the public is less intelligent or receptive to change than it really is.”

Danny Boyle

“There's a certain truth that you do end up making the same film again and again so if you vary the genre you have a chance of breaking that cycle.”

Alfonso Cuarón

“The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or bad movie, it's just to see what you learn for the next one.”

Alexander Payne

“I thank you for this award, though I think there may be a problem with a world in which making small, human and humorous films is ‘an achievement.’ It should be the norm.”

Neil Jordan

“My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end. ”

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.”

Fernando Di Leo

Umberto Lenzi

“For me the characters were more important than the murders.”

Dylan Kidd

Roger Corman

“In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.”

John Stockwell

“[Screenwriting is] a lonely, miserable profession. But the pay can be okay and you get to spend a lot of time in Hawaii.”

Trey Parker

“Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they're the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be.”

Jack Hill

“I liked the Warner Bros. movies of the forties. That’s my main influence. The noirs and the gangster films.”

Steve James

Albert Brooks

“When I die, if the word ‘thong’ appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I’ve screwed up.”

Tarsem Singh

“I happen to be like a prostitute in love with the profession.”