Robert Rossen

Victor Fleming

“Don’t get excited. Obstacles make a better picture.”

William A. Wellman

“People have asked me a million times, "Why don't you like your own pictures?" I don't know why. I do know that every time I look at one of them, I realize I could have done it better.”

André De Toth

[On filmmaking] “I’ll try to undress in front of you, to reveal the love of my life, my addiction to making images, creating people who come to life on the screen—a screen of any size in any format. I’ll tell the truth as I see it on celluloid or in bronze.”

Joseph Losey

“Films can illustrate our existence…they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But NOT give the answers.”

John Cromwell

Jim Henson

“The Muppets transcend all age groups. Their satiric comment on society seems to delight all ages.”

Peter Weir

“There’s almost a fear that if you understood too deeply the way you arrived at choices, you could become self-conscious. In any case, many ideas which are full of personal meaning seem rather banal when you put words to them.”

David Lean

“My distinguishing talent is the ability to put people under the microscope, perhaps to go one or two layers farther down than some other directors.”

Don Siegel

“Most of my pictures, I’m sorry to say, are about nothing. Because I’m a whore. I work for money. It’s the American way.”

Henry Hathaway

“To be a good director you’ve got to be a bastard. I’m a bastard and I know it.”

Delmer Daves

Mike Leigh

“The whole thing about making films in an organic film location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across”

Mike Nichols

“Nerves provide me with energy...It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that I get worried.”

Ridley Scott

“People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at. ”

Stanley Kubrick

“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”

Jan Švankmajer

“I never call myself an animated filmmaker because I am interested not in animation techniques or creating a complete illusion, but in bringing life to everyday objects.”

Richard Fleischer

“Every silver lining has a black, ugly cloud hanging over it.”

Elia Kazan

“I like directors who come on the set and create something that’s a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.”

Ray Harryhausen

“People ask me if I would have used computer graphics today. I may have, I don’t know. There’s a lot of technology now that allows you to view instantly the film you’ve just shot. But I never cared what I had done, I only cared where I was going.”