Todd Haynes

“I've always felt more politically comfortable making films that demonstrated problems and didn't tell you how to solve them, but made you feel enough for the subjects who were hurt by these problems...”

Joel Coen

“The characters are the result of two things-first, we elaborate them into fairly well-defined people through their dialogue, then they happen all over again, when the actor interprets them. ”

Trey Parker

“Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they're the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be.”

Henry Selick

“There’s invention every day. Every day it’s like a feast. It’s very grueling, it’s very demanding. Puppets seem like vampires sometimes. They live, and you’re depleted.”

Martin Campbell

“I like pre-production and post the best. I don't like shooting at all. I find it grueling and tough, but I love post and the whole process of seeing the film finally come together. You start ironing out all the rough spots, and the really bad bits you just throw away. So from day one of post to the last day, you see nothing but improvements.”

John Frankenheimer

“I feel that my job is to create an atmosphere where creative people can do their best work. In other words, I have to create an atmosphere where these people feel safe, where they feel respected, and where they feel that they can contribute.”

Frank Capra

“My advice to young filmmakers is this: Don’t follow trends. Start them!”

Fritz Lang

“I should say that I was a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or rarely, with my ears...to my constant regret.”

James Cameron

“People call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I'm a rightist. I do something until it's right, and then I move on to the next thing.”

Alfred Hitchcock

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

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. ”

Michael Mann

“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.”

Walter Hill

“Every film I've done has been a Western. The Western is ultimately a stripped down moral universe that is, whatever the dramatic problems are, beyond the normal avenues of social control and social alleviation of the problem, and I like to do that even within contemporary stories.”

Wes Anderson

“I know that feeling of looking back and thinking, that part I'd like to fix. So I obsessively try not to compromise.”

George Lucas

“If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.”

Frank Darabont

“A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.”

George Roy Hill

Richard Linklater

“I've always liked the minds of criminals, they seem similar to artists. ”

Miloš Forman

“The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.”

Billy Wilder

“If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.”