Maurice Pialat

“What I try to do, with the actors' consent, is to create something by beginning with a set situation that we can deviate from in the course of the shoot. ”

Luis Buñuel

“If someone were to tell me I had twenty years left, and ask me how I'd like to spend them, I'd reply 'Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.'”

Larisa Shepitko

“Any interference by society in an adult’s personal life will be extremely dangerous until society itself becomes ideal. But in the ideal society interference in personal life will obviously be unnecessary.”

Henri-Georges Clouzot

“I want only to tell a story. I think movies are entertainment. If at the same time you can get across something you feel, that is perfect.”

Francis Ford Coppola

“I'm in a unique situation. I'm like now an elderly retired guy who made a lot of money, and now I can just, instead of playing golf, I can make art films.”

Steven Soderbergh

“To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.”

Douglas Sirk

“If I can say one thing for my pictures, it is a certain craftsmanship. A thought which has gone into every angle. There is nothing there without an optical reason.”

Ritwik Ghatak

“Why films? Because I am totally crazy. I can’t live without making films. I look at the struggle and misery of contemporary life. And try to say something to the best of my ability.”

Jean-Luc Godard

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

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.”

Preston Sturges

“The most incredible thing about my career is that I had one.”

Kim Ki-duk

“I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.”

Alfred Hitchcock

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

Ernst Lubitsch

“There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one.”

Werner Herzog

“It is my duty to direct because the films might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.”

Yash Chopra

“I'm the sentimental sort. I cry easily. I cry when I see poignant films made by other directors.”

Yasujirô Ozu

“I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others… For me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength.”

Lynne Ramsay

“I've found that film-making's not just a job, it becomes part of your whole life.”

Guy Maddin

“Whatever I do next, it'll be a horror film.”

Guru Dutt