John Woo

“The movies I like to make are very rich and full of passion. Some people see me as an action director, but action is not the only thing in my movies. I always like to show human nature - something deep inside the heart.”

Prachya Pinkaew

“Isn't it strange that they never have a problem with extreme violence? I'm aware of the violence in my films, and I did all those scenes because I wanted to make the fights realistic.”

Whit Stillman

“For me, the present is a golden era that’s ending too. That’s the greatest golden era. Right now. [Laughs.] I just like pining for lost times. I can pine for this morning.”

Kathryn Bigelow

“I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about what my aptitude is, and I really think it's to explore and push the medium. It's not about breaking gender roles or genre traditions.”

Christopher Guest

“Comedy is like music. You have to know the key and you have to find players with good chops.”

Hitoshi Matsumoto

Sergio Corbucci

“The American Western was too important for our generation. We make them even when we don’t want to.”

Sydney Pollack

“I don't value a film I've enjoyed making. If it's good, it's damned hard work.”

Steve McQueen

“My influences come from real life. I’m not interested in cinema for cinema’s sake. I’m interested in life—what one does and how one interacts.”

John Landis

“Directors, like actors, get typecast.”

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.”

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

“It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful...it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.”

Federico Fellini

“What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one...”

Kenji Misumi

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.”

Peter Jackson

“I don't quite know what an auteur is. I've never quite understood that term, because filmmaking is such a huge team effort.”

Spike Lee

“I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.”

Nicolas Winding Refn

“Art is an act of violence.”

Shintarô Katsu

Richard Linklater

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