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.”

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.”

Akira Kurosawa

“Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied...that's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.”

Nagisa Ôshima

“My hatred for Japanese cinema includes absolutely all of it.”

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Mikio Naruse

“From the youngest age, I have thought that the world we live in betrays us; this thought still remains with me.”

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.”

Jacques Tourneur

“I look for very strong visual unity by using a type of framing and camera movement that is very simple. Everything must come from inside. It mustn’t be superficial. I hate weird camera angles and distorting lenses.”

Jacques Tati

“Like a dancer learns to dance ... a visual comic learns to use his legs.”

Jacques Rivette

“What's important for me in a film is that it be alive, that it be imbued with presence, which is basically the same thing. And that this presence, inscribed within the film, possesses a form of magic. There's something profoundly mysterious in this.”

Agnès Varda

“I'm not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman - not unless she is looking for new images.”

Michelangelo Antonioni

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

Chris Marker

“Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.”

Alain Resnais

“I'm always in search of special nonrealistic language that has musicality. ”

Jean-Luc Godard

“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order. ”

Robert Bresson

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”

John Ford

“I hate the cinema. But I like making westerns.”

Howard Hawks

“I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move! ”

Ousmane Sembène

“I am really unable to talk about my life – I don’t know my life. I’ve travelled a lot and this is the life that I have lived, but that doesn’t mean that I know myself.”

Tsai Ming-liang

“The body always plays an important role in my films. You could say the body is the most beautiful thing we have or you could say it’s the ugliest thing we have. We can sell bodies, we can adore or worship bodies.”