Sam Taylor Wood

“When I was pregnant I took the year off and did nothing and I think everything builds up and then there's this vomiting forth of ideas.”

Clint Eastwood

“...in America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience. Not to say that it's all bad, but it leaves a lot of the rest of us out of it. To me cinema can be a much more friendly world if there's a lot of things to choose from.”

Rob Reiner

“Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you can do is fix yourself. And that's a lot.”

Carl Theodor Dreyer

“Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.”

Kirsten Sheridan

Roger Donaldson

Wilson Yip

“Life is that unpredictable! It’s also the reason why I like magic, appear out of nowhere and disappear all of a sudden. I like the feeling.”

Wong Jing

[Talking about art movies]: “I am not professional in that category. I am professional in commercial movies. If I do an art film, I am an amateur, why should I do an amateur film?”

Matthew Vaughn

“Cliches are what make you understand something.”

Richard Ayoade

Tarsem Singh

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

Curtis Hanson

“All directors are egomaniacs.”

Cameron Crowe

“In the future, everybody is going to be a director. Somebody’s got to live a real life so we have something to make a movie about.”

Michael Winterbottom

“Each scene should feel right, should be true at that moment, and gradually you accumulate these moments of truth until you get enough of them together that it becomes a story that’s interesting.”

Alexander Payne

“I thank you for this award, though I think there may be a problem with a world in which making small, human and humorous films is ‘an achievement.’ It should be the norm.”

Andrei Tarkovsky

“Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.”

Steven Spielberg

“I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we're all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines. We're all gonna lose our jobs. We're all gonna be on the Internet trying to find an audience.”

Robert Zemeckis

“No matter how many obstacles that are thrown in our path, there are ways to except them and to live through them.”

Jeff Nichols

Hong Sang-soo

“When I finish a film, I feel like I have overcome a certain hurdle. It's really good for me as a human being, and I hope that for some people, my films will do the same thing.”