Darren Aronofsky

“To me, watching a movie is like going to an amusement park. My worst fear is making a film that people don't think is a good ride.”

Woody Allen

“Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”

David Lynch

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

Hayao Miyazaki

“Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.”

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.”

Gregg Araki

“I couldn’t make movies like this if I started to worry about what Jerry Falwell is going to have to say about it.”

Paolo Sorrentino

“I can’t stand anyone or anything. Not even myself! Especially myself! Only one thing I tolerate. The gradient.”

Wong Kar-wai

“Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things that we get, but not the things we wish we had.”

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.”

François Ozon

“I think cinema has to deal with desire. In the cinema, you are with a big screen, it is dark, and you watch some images, like a fantasy, so I think it is important for you to feel desire for what you see.”

Sofia Coppola

“Perhaps it makes sense that a woman whose earliest memory was on the set of Apocalypse Now would grow up to direct a dark fable about five adolescent girls who unapologetically and unceremoniously kill themselves...”

Paul Thomas Anderson

“I'll rebel against powers and principalities, all the time. Always, I will.”

Danny Boyle

“There's a certain truth that you do end up making the same film again and again so if you vary the genre you have a chance of breaking that cycle.”

Andrew Jarecki

John Cameron Mitchell

“It’s ultimately a boring thing, your sexuality – inherently neutral and kind of dull. It’s what you do with it that’s interesting.”

Gus Van Sant

“I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.”

Harmony Korine

“When I was a child the temptation to sin was always a romantic option. This romantic option lead me to the cinema, a place where sin was welcome.”

Michael Haneke

“Every film is manipulative, raping the viewer. So the question is: Why do I rape the viewer?”

Todd Solondz

“Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can’t celebrate humanity but I’m not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.”

Terry Gilliam

“You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.”