Robert Wise

“You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames. ”

Robert Bresson

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

Andrew Haigh

“Films are so over-edited nowadays. Nobody gives things the space to just exist. You don’t need to be chopping back and forwards. People like Antonioni were happy to just let things exist.”

Alfonso Cuarón

“The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or bad movie, it's just to see what you learn for the next one.”

Ray Harryhausen

“People ask me if I would have used computer graphics today. I may have, I don’t know. There’s a lot of technology now that allows you to view instantly the film you’ve just shot. But I never cared what I had done, I only cared where I was going.”

Jacques Tourneur

“I look for very strong visual unity by using a type of framing and camera movement that is very simple. Everything must come from inside. It mustn’t be superficial. I hate weird camera angles and distorting lenses.”

Anthony Perkins

“I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life.”

Blake Edwards

“Make 'em redecorate your office. That's primary, to let them know where you stand. Then, when you're shooting interior sequences, use your own interior decorator and set dresser. That way everything on the set will fit your house when you're finished.”

Ronald Neame

“One of the things I do feel about today’s films is that they are too frenetic. There’s too much cut cut cut cut cut. When something is playing beautifully, and you have beautiful actors, you don’t have to cut all the time, because it doesn’t help the scene. It just destroys it.”

Ida Lupino

“I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power...I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right.”

Mohammad Rasoulof

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.”

Jim Jarmusch

“I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are. ”

Arthur Penn

“Life is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

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.”

Sydney Pollack

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

David Fincher

“I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about JAWS is that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.”

Chuck Jones

[On one of his most famous characters] "The coyote is victimized by his own ineptitude. I never understood how to use tools and that's really the coyote's problem."

Sergio Leone

“In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life in jeeps and upset all my dreams.”

Robert Altman

“Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.”