1.
A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
Baz Luhrmann
2.
The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It's not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it's about self-revelation, becoming who you are.
Baz Luhrmann
3.
Western films don't do very well in India.
Baz Luhrmann
4.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself
Baz Luhrmann
5.
Ultimately, you have to pursue your own path, not someone's idea of the right path. You need to stay on your path.
Baz Luhrmann
6.
Sydney is rather like an arrogant lover. When it rains it can deny you its love and you can find it hard to relate to. It's not a place that's built to be rainy or cold. But when the sun comes out, it bats its eyelids, it's glamorous, beautiful, attractive, smart, and it's very hard to get away from its magnetic pull.
Baz Luhrmann
7.
If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.
Baz Luhrmann
8.
The race is long but in the end it is only with YOURSELF.
Baz Luhrmann
9.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.
Baz Luhrmann
10.
I really believe musical form will go on. There's got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.
Baz Luhrmann
11.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.
Baz Luhrmann
12.
All good, clean stories are melodrama, it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.
Baz Luhrmann
13.
Trust yourself that you can do it and get it
Baz Luhrmann
14.
Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don't manage that - but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.
Baz Luhrmann
15.
I've always loved the old epics that tell a simple emotional story, whether it's the tumultuous relationship between Rhett and Scarlett or Lawrence of Arabia's passion to get lost in a faraway place.
Baz Luhrmann
16.
You really think that on my films people tell me what to do? I don't think so. On my films I decide.
Baz Luhrmann
17.
I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.
Baz Luhrmann
18.
In terms of the mechanics of story, myth is an intriguing one because we didn't make myth up; myth is an imprinture of the human condition.
Baz Luhrmann
19.
I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.
Baz Luhrmann
20.
Don't worry about the future.
Baz Luhrmann
21.
Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.
Baz Luhrmann
22.
The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It's eclectic but above all it's fresh, inventive and creative and that's what I love about it.
Baz Luhrmann
23.
I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.
Baz Luhrmann
24.
I always have a point of view. It may not be right, but it's my own.
Baz Luhrmann
25.
When you're in theater or the circus or film - to me it's all one - affairs happen. People fall in love.
Baz Luhrmann
26.
Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day when dreaming ends.
Baz Luhrmann
27.
There's a whole system in Hollywood where the director never speaks to the studio, but I like to engage them in a discussion. I listen.
Baz Luhrmann
28.
I never see things I make in the same way that the audience does. You can never do that.
Baz Luhrmann
29.
I feel funny about owning art. I don't really want to say: "Wow, come and see my Monet - it's in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar."
Baz Luhrmann
30.
One of the great things about Sydney is that it has a great acceptance of everyone and everything. It's an incredibly tolerant city, a city with a huge multicultural basis.
Baz Luhrmann
31.
My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education – from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.
Baz Luhrmann
32.
At a very young age I was allowed to go into the cinema and watch adult films.
Baz Luhrmann
33.
Australia, to the rest of the world, is just far away, and Australia in the Thirties was the faraway of the faraway.
Baz Luhrmann
34.
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.
Baz Luhrmann
35.
I mean, '8 ½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.
Baz Luhrmann
36.
Hurt him. Hurt him and save him
Baz Luhrmann
37.
I don't have fights with actors. In absolute honesty, I've never fought with any actor ever.
Baz Luhrmann
38.
In the '60s not everybody was wearing flowers in their hair and flowing caftans.
Baz Luhrmann
39.
So, what is creative freedom? We can make what we want, how we want. The only constraint is: not for any budget.
Baz Luhrmann
40.
I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.
Baz Luhrmann
41.
I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.
Baz Luhrmann
42.
Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.
Baz Luhrmann
43.
I mean the future has become old fashioned.
Baz Luhrmann
44.
It's pretty hard to get mugged in Manhattan.
Baz Luhrmann
45.
In the '80s, everyone wanted to be in opera. It was groovy.
Baz Luhrmann
46.
Having grown up far, far away in a small country town in Australia, I was only slightly aware of hip-hop.
Baz Luhrmann
47.
One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.
Baz Luhrmann
48.
In 1977, hip-hop literally wasn't outside the boroughs. But I was profoundly aware of the city through films like Saturday Night Fever, The French Connection, and Network. I had a friend who visited New York, and I asked him what it was like. He said, "Oh, it's great. Just wear a coat and don't look anyone in the eye."
Baz Luhrmann
49.
I am always worried when someone says, 'This is perfect.'
Baz Luhrmann
50.
To be honest, there is a tourists' trail; my family had a farm and a gas station, and you can go and see my birthplace, though where I lived is actually under a freeway now.
Baz Luhrmann
