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.”

Cecil B. DeMille

“Creation is a drug I can't do without.”

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

“I am never quite sure whether I am one of the cinema's elder statesman or just the oldest whore on the beat.”

Bob Fosse

“Dance expresses joy better than anything else.”

Jerry Schatzberg

“I’m always a voyeur.”

Hiroshi Teshigahara

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.”

Catherine Breillat

“When I shoot a film, I always project myself into one of the characters, at once into either a man or a woman...”

Lynne Ramsay

“I've found that film-making's not just a job, it becomes part of your whole life.”

Nicole Holofcener

“To say you want to be a director is to risk sounding obnoxious, pretentious, arrogant, and I think women are more fearful of sounding that way than men are.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

Agnès Varda

“I'm not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman - not unless she is looking for new images.”

Howard Hawks

“I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move! ”

Michael Curtiz

“The only things you regret are the things you don't do.”

Raoul Walsh

“There is probably no moment in picturemaking that is more acutely essential to a director’s success than the instant of his choice of story material. For the director, that is the moment of conception.”

Frank Borzage

“Make the audience sentimental instead of the player. Make the audience act.”

Jacques Rivette

“What's important for me in a film is that it be alive, that it be imbued with presence, which is basically the same thing. And that this presence, inscribed within the film, possesses a form of magic. There's something profoundly mysterious in this.”

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.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

“Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.”

Louis Malle

“You must find the note, the correct key, for your story. If you find it, everything will work. If you do not, everything will stick out like elbows.”