“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. ”
“I think cinema has to deal with desire. In the cinema, you are with a big screen, it is dark, and you watch some images, like a fantasy, so I think it is important for you to feel desire for what you see.”
“I, as a filmmaker, treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters. I don't care if people are fond of them or despise them, as long as I created them with my best intentions and efforts.”
“I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful.”
“[On Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this would, among other things, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence, but still keep its dreamy quality.”
“I've seen thousands of films where people are brought down, where it's "life is terrible and we all agree" and the critical audience is over here for that, and the general public is over here. And it seems that cinema has gone out, or life, has gone out a kilter.”
“Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can’t celebrate humanity but I’m not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.”
“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.”
“The impetus was the whole Civil Rights Movement and we felt we had a responsibility to reflect reality, tell the truth about the black community. To help, however we can, to march the social movement forward.”
“If it happens that people respond to your work in your lifetime, well, you’re very lucky. In some way it gives you permission to go on making movies. But if you don’t get the applause, well, there are other things. I mean, after all, there’s your life to live.”
“Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things that we get, but not the things we wish we had.”