Directors Quotes

Time is a precious thing. Never waste it.

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple

No one appears on our stage unless the director has placed them there for our benefit

The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

Let the child be the scriptwriter, the director and the actor in his own play.

As I told the students every time I visited a campus, you are the director of your own movie, and if you aren't enjoying what you are doing, change it.

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

If you talk to any director, they'll say music is fifty percent of the movie.

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

I can't imagine being a woman in the world of acting, like where you age starts to weigh you down - you go from being attractive to where they [directors] decided you're out... I feel like with stand-up comedy, it doesn't matter if I've gotten fatter.

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

The architect is not only the director, but he is the composer. And, as a composer, the architect brings a sense of creativity to each building.

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

God gave me a great body and it's my duty to take care of my physical temple.

I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad.

Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.

To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script.

I am both proud and honored to be on the Board of Directors for the Texas Ballet Theater.

Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It's a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other.

I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.

Without dreams, there can be no courage. And without courage, there can be no action.

I'm only wanted by directors for the image I give off, and it makes me angry. I always wanted to be an actor and not a beauty pageant winner.

I'm on the board of directors for Peace Now, which works tirelessly between the Palestinians and the Israelis to create peace in the Middle East and we've never been closer.

Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.

An actor really suffers when the director isn't prepared because you start running out of time for the shoot and then have to do it fast.

I should mention that I am a member of the board of directors of Dimensional Fund Advisors.

The very nature of cool is that you think about it too much and it becomes uncool.

I've really enjoyed my work in television, but the problem for me is the turnover of directors every week.

I particularly remember the time I gave (the research director) my paper on the banking industry. I felt very proud of my work. However, he read through it and said, 'This is useless. What makes the stock go up and down?' That comment acted as a spur. Thereafter, I focused my analysis on seeking to identify the factors that were strongly correlated to a stock's price movement as opposed to looking at all the fundamentals. Frankly, even today, many analysts still don't know what makes their particular stocks go up and down.

My contributions were many: First clown director, with witty sayings and flashily dressed, now called master of ceremonies.

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.

Insider trading tells everybody at precisely the wrong time that everything is rigged, and only people who have a billion dollars and have access to and are best friends with people who are on boards of directors of major companies - they're the only ones who can make a true buck.

I had to endure the worst time of all in terms of racial discrimination in Hollywood when i first started out. It was inconcievable to American directors and producers that a Mexican woman could have a lead role.

Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers.

The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money.

I'm always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it's a director's medium, and if they don't want to hear from me I just step back.

The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being.

Who would have thought that [director] Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.

I went without health insurance until 'Roger & Me,' basically - from about age 20 till about age 35. With 'Roger & Me,' I joined the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild, and since then I've had excellent health care managed by the union.

I like, as a director and a spectator, simple, direct, frank films. Nothing disgusts me more than snobbism, mannerism, technical gratuity... and, most of all, intellectualism.

Sam Wood, the director, made most of his money as a real estate agent; there was nothing of the temperamental artist about him.

All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance.

I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen 'Footloose' since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me.

Screenwriting is the most prized of all the cinematic arts. Actually, it isn't, but it should be.

My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while framing a better shot.

There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors

This is not a tough job. You read a script. If you like the part and the money is O.K., you do it. Then you remember your lines. You show up on time. You do what the director tells you to do. When you finish, you rest and then go on to the next part. That's it.

For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident.

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

I tell a story, and therefore I exist.