Charles Crichton

“People think that if you're directing comedy, you've got to be funny. On the contrary, you've got to be serious.”

Jason Reitman

“I don't want to make films that give you the answer. If there is a message to my films - and I hope there isn't - it's to be open-minded.”

Edgar Wright

“Everything that I've done so far has had a bigger budget than the last, but I've never ever felt the benefit of the bigger budget because the ideas always exceed the budget. ”

Tarsem Singh

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

Guillermo del Toro

“I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue.”

Quentin Tarantino

“I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience.”

Ethan Coen

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

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. ”

Robert Towne

“Of course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

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. ”

John Huston

“The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on.”

David Fincher

“I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about JAWS is that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.”

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.”

Robert Redford

“Ideas aren't real estate, they grow collectively and that knocks out the egotistical loneliness that generally infects art.”

Martin McDonagh

“I can't stand up in front of people. It just fills me with horror.”

George Roy Hill

Billy Wilder

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

John Woo

“The movies I like to make are very rich and full of passion. Some people see me as an action director, but action is not the only thing in my movies. I always like to show human nature - something deep inside the heart.”

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.”

Christopher Nolan

“I think audiences get too comfortable and familiar in today's movies. They believe everything they're hearing and seeing. I like to shake that up.”