Guy Maddin

“Whatever I do next, it'll be a horror film.”

Jean Cocteau

“Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. ”

Jean-Pierre Melville

“I believe that you must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage.”

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Kenji Mizoguchi

“You must put the odor of the human body into images...describe for me the implacable, the egoistic, the sensual, the cruel...there are nothing but disgusting people in this world.”

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.”

Alfred Hitchcock

“For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.”

Gus Van Sant

“I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.”

Michelangelo Antonioni

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

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.”

François Truffaut

“I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.”

Derek Jarman

“I wouldn’t wish the eighties on anyone, it was the time when all that was rotten bubbled to the surface. If you were not at the receiving end of this mayhem you could be unaware of it.”

Robert Altman

“Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

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

David Lynch

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

David Cronenberg

“Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing their whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.”

Stanley Donen

“For me directing is like having sex: when it’s good, it’s very good; but when it’s bad, it’s still good.”

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

“It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful...it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.”

Federico Fellini

“What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one...”

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.'”