Věra Chytilová

“I have no desire to cuddle my audience.”

Philippe Garrel

“Cinema is Freud plus Lumière.”

Alain Robbe-Grillet

“A new form will always seem more or less an absence of any form at all, since it is unconsciously judged by reference to the consecrated forms.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

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.”

David Lean

“My distinguishing talent is the ability to put people under the microscope, perhaps to go one or two layers farther down than some other directors.”

Ingmar Bergman

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

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.”

Jean Cocteau

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

Roberto Rossellini

“I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.”

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.”

Karel Reisz

Jacques Demy

"He has an idea of the world he is trying to apply to the cinema or else… an idea of cinema which he applies to the world." —Jean-Luc Godard

Chris Marker

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

Sidney Lumet

“All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.”

Billy Wilder

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

Robert Bresson

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

John Cassavetes

“The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.”

John Carpenter

“In France, I'm an auteur; in Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain, a genre film director; and, in the USA, a bum.”

David Lynch

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