16 Brilliant Movie Quotes from 16 Great Directors

We know their films, but do we know their minds? What is film in the eyes of people who made them? 16 cinema masters shed some lights on their ideas of film and film making here. The only way we can understand these statements is watching more of their films.

“I steal from every single movie ever made. I love it – if my work has anything it’s that I’m taking this from this and that from that and mixing them together. If people don’t like that, then tough titty, don’t go and see it, alright? I steal from everything. Great artists steal; they don’t do homages.” – Quentin Tarantino

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

“Films are subjective-what you like, what you don’t like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it’s the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they’ve done, I want that effort there-I want that sincerity. And when you don’t feel it, that’s the only time I feel like I’m wasting my time at the movies.” – Christopher Nolan

“Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things that always become ugly with time.” – Jean Cocteau

“I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you’re making a horror film doesn’t mean you can’t make an artful film.” – David Cronenberg

“When I make a film I’m always in reality among the trees, and among the people like yourselves. There’s no symbolic or conventional filter between me and reality as there is in literature. The cinema is an explosion of my love for reality.” – Pier Paolo Pasolini

“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.” – David Lean

“As if Japan weren’t small enough to begin with, I fail to understand why it is necessary to think of it in even smaller units. No matter where I go in the world, although I can’t speak any foreign language, I don’t feel out of place. I think of the earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice how foolish international friction is, and they would put an end to it. We are, after all, at a point where it is almost narrow-minded to think merely in geocentric terms. Human beings have launched satellites into outer space, and yet they still grovel on earth looking at their own feet like wild dogs. What is to become of our planet?” – Akira Kurosawa