Christopher Nolan Quotes & Sayings

It's not that often that you get to have a large commercial success and then have something that you want to do that you can excite people about. — Christopher Nolan

I'm very happy where 3-D is going, which is that it's becoming a choice - and thankfully, most people are still choosing 2-D. — Christopher Nolan

Why do we Fall?
So we can learn to pick ourselves back up. — Christopher Nolan

Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. — Christopher Nolan

I just love photographing things and putting them together to tell a story. — Christopher Nolan

I always thought the joy of reading a book is not knowing what happens next. (Leonard Shelby, Memento) — Christopher Nolan

Batman and Superman are very different characters but they're both iconic and elemental. Finding the right story for them both is the key. — Christopher Nolan

Yes, to me that's one of the most compelling fears in film noir and the psychological thriller genre - that fear of conspiracy. It's definitely something that I have a fear of - not being in control of your own life. I think that's something people can relate to, and those genres are most successful when they derive the material from genuine fears that people have. — Christopher Nolan

I realized that if you're trying to reach an audience, being as subjective as possible and really trying to write from something genuine is the way to go. Really it's mostly from my own process, my own experience. — Christopher Nolan

I've been fascinated by dreams my whole life, since I was a kid, and I think the relationship between movies and dreams is something that's always interested me. — Christopher Nolan

If you're going to perform inception, you need imagination. You need the simplest version of the idea-the one that will grow naturally in the subject's mind. Subtle art. — Christopher Nolan

Period films to me are very often alienating to the audience. There's very often a formality. A staunchy quality to them that comes from the misenscene. It also comes from the performances of the actors, because they're acting Victorian which really means that they're just acting the way they've seen previous actors act Victorian. — Christopher Nolan

The problem with big films is they snowball very rapidly and you can never pull back. It's a pipeline that needs to be fed. — Christopher Nolan

But 'Memento' was so successful, such a huge cult hit, almost on the scale of a large film. If that had happened, with all the acclaim, before the next job, I'd have found it very difficult to figure out what to do next. — Christopher Nolan

I think there are advantages to different scales of filmmaking. You wouldn't want to do just one thing. — Christopher Nolan

Bruce Wayne/Batman: A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat on a young boy's shoulders to let him know that the world hadn't ended. — Christopher Nolan

You never quite know what you're going to come back to and figure out how to make it work. You never quite know where that desire to finish something, or return to something in a fresh way, is going to come from. Every time I finished a film and went back and looked at it, I had changed as a person. — Christopher Nolan

I try not to have actors in mind when I write because the tendency then is to be influenced by either their last performance or your favourite of their performances. — Christopher Nolan

I think for me when you look at the idea of being able to create a limitless world and use it almost as a playground for action and adventure and so forth, I naturally gravitate towards cinematic worlds, whether it's the Bond films and things like that. — Christopher Nolan

To be honest, I don't enjoy watching movies much when I'm working. They tend to fall apart on me a bit. — Christopher Nolan

In Hollywood there's a great openness, almost a voracious appetite for new people. In England there's a great suspicion of the new. In cultural terms, that can be a good thing, but when you're trying to break into the film industry, it's definitely a bad thing. — Christopher Nolan

The thing you fail to grasp is that people are not basically good. We are basically selfish. We shove and clamour and cry for adoration, and beat down everyone else to get it. Life is a competition of prattling peacocks enraptured in inane mating rituals. But for all our effacing and self-importance, we are all slaves to what we fear most. You have so very much to learn. Here. Let me teach you. — Christopher Nolan

You musn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. — Christopher Nolan

A camera is a camera, a shot is a shot, how you tell the story is the main thing. — Christopher Nolan

One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself. — Christopher Nolan

Well, you always discover a lot in the editing room. Particularly the action, because you have to over-shoot a lot and shoot an enormous amount of material because many of the sequences have to be discovered in the editing and manipulation of it. — Christopher Nolan

I like films that continue to spin your head in all sorts of different directions after you've seen them. — Christopher Nolan

We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don't, in small ways. That's what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale. — Christopher Nolan

I've always believed that if you want to really try and make a great film, not a good film, but a great film, you have to take a lot of risks. — Christopher Nolan

Revenge is a particularly interesting concept, especially the notion of whether or not it exists outside of just an abstract idea. — Christopher Nolan

You know when Hollywood does a great big blockbuster that really wraps you up in a world, and lets you believe in extraordinary things that move you in some way, in an almost operatic sensibility? That to me is the most fun I have at the movies. — Christopher Nolan

I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. (Leonard Shelby, Memento) — Christopher Nolan

I want to be surprised and entertained by a movie, so that's what we're trying to do for the audience. Obviously, we also have to sell the film. — Christopher Nolan

The only job that was ever of interest to me other than filmmaking is architecture. — Christopher Nolan

I've been interested in dreams since I as a kid and I've wanted to do a film about them for a long time. — Christopher Nolan

There's very few directors I think in this industry that would pitch to a studio that they wanted to do a multi-layered almost at times existential high action, high drama surreal film that's sort of locked in his mind. And then have an opportunity to do that. — Christopher Nolan

Don't talk like one of them. You're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these ... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve. -The Joker — Christopher Nolan

But, in each case, as a filmmaker who's been given sizable budgets with which to work, I feel a responsibility to the audience to be shooting with the absolute highest quality technology that I can and make the film in a way that I want. — Christopher Nolan

Chris [ Nolan] and I have a strange way of working from the non-movie process, where after all these conversations and reading the script and more conversations, Chris went out and shot the films and the first thing he did, he wouldn't show it to me until I had written the music - not out of meanness, or anything, it just sort of seemed an interesting idea to see if there was some synchronicity and letting me use my imagination to the fullest instead of being constricted by cuts and images. — 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. — Christopher Nolan

mankind was born on earth but was never meant to die here — Christopher Nolan

It's very important that a film that intends to play tricks on the audience ... has to play fair with the audience. For me, any time you're going to have a reveal in the film, it's essential that it have been shown to the audience as much as possible. What that means is that some people are going to figure it out very early on. Other people not til the end. Everybody watches the film differently. — Christopher Nolan

There are points where you worry that you might be putting too much in and alienating the audience. But, funnily enough, some of those fears aren't correct. — Christopher Nolan

The film's title star, Christian Bale, told me in June that he'd signed a multi-picture contract. When I caught up with Batman Begins ... All I can tell you is, we're talking. There was quite an air of secrecy around the development of 'Batman Begins,' and there will be even more around the development of another film, if they move forward. — Christopher Nolan

I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal. I know I've felt it. — Christopher Nolan

I remember the initial genesis quite clearly. My interest in dreams comes from this notion of realizing that when you dream you create the world that you are perceiving, and I thought that feedback loop was pretty amazing. — Christopher Nolan

But I know the rage that drives you. That impossible anger strangling the grief, until the memory of your loved ones is just poison in your veins. And one day you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed, so you'd be spared your pain. — Christopher Nolan

What I try to do is write from the inside out. I really try to jump into the world of the film and the characters, try to imagine myself in that world rather than imagining it as a film I'm watching onscreen. Sometimes, that means I'm discovering things the way the audience will, with character and story. — Christopher Nolan

I like films that don't have that unonimity of a response; that don't have consensus in the audience. What it is essentially for me is that if you go back and watch the film a second time, do you feel that you've been played fair with? Are all the clues in place? Indeed, sometimes these things are even overstated. Specifically, for that reason. — Christopher Nolan

What I react against in other people's work, as a filmgoer, is when I see something in a movie that I feel is supposed to make me feel emotional, but I don't believe the filmmaker shares that emotion. They just think the audience will. And I think you can feel that separation. So any time I find myself writing something that I don't really respond to, but I'm telling myself, 'Oh yes, but the audience is going to like this,' then I know I'm on the wrong track and I just throw it out. — Christopher Nolan

I never considered myself a lucky person. I'm the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am. — Christopher Nolan

We shouldn't be chasing other movies, but stay true to the tone of Man of Steel. — Christopher Nolan

Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing. — Christopher Nolan

I made 'Batman' the way I made every other film, and I've done it to my own satisfaction - because the film, truly, is exactly the way I wanted it to be. — Christopher Nolan

Heist movies tend to be a bit superficial, glamorous, and fun. They don't tend to be emotionally engaging. — Christopher Nolan

But in the back of my mind I've always looked to the biggest-scale Hollywood movies. Because to me the most satisfying experience is of watching a movie, if it's done really well. And so that aspiration is always it for me, if I have the opportunity to do it. — Christopher Nolan

It's certainly difficult to balance marketing a film and putting it out there to everybody with wanting to keep it fresh for the audience. — Christopher Nolan

No, I've only ever done one film at a time. — Christopher Nolan

I sometimes think how strange it is that I've got to do exactly what I want, and that is difficult to cope with. You have to remind yourself every few weeks: I'm making this film and this is exactly what I want to do. And suddenly you're happy again. — Christopher Nolan

I don't actually tend to do a lot of research when I'm writing. I do know because I think a lot of what I find you want to do with research is just confirming things you want to do. If the research contradicts what you want to do, you tend to go ahead and do it anyway. — Christopher Nolan

For the last 10 years, I've felt increasing pressure to stop shooting film and start shooting video, but I've never understood why. It's cheaper to work on film, it's far better looking, it's the technology that's been known and understood for a hundred years, and it's extremely reliable. — Christopher Nolan

The quality of racing continues to excel with starters increasing to 1496,. — Christopher Nolan

The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it. — Christopher Nolan

When I look at a digitally acquired and projected image, it looks inferior against an original negative anamorphic print or an IMAX one. — Christopher Nolan

As soon as television became the only secondary way in which films were watched, films had to adhere to a pretty linear system, whereby you can drift off for ten minutes and go and answer the phone and not really lose your place. — Christopher Nolan

George Lazenby is no one's favorite James Bond, but for me the anonymity at the center of this lavish production only serves to reveal the Bond machine firing on all cylinders: superb editing and photography, incredible score, great setpieces. The most romantic in the series, and it actually has, of all things, a tragic ending. — Christopher Nolan

I've never read Joseph Campbell, and I don't know all that much about story archetypes. — Christopher Nolan

Yeah, it's odd when you look back at your own work. Some filmmakers don't look back at their work at all. I look at my work a lot, actually. I feel like I learned something while looking at stuff I've done in terms of what I'm going to do in the future, mistakes I've made and things at work or what have you. — Christopher Nolan

My most enjoyable movie going experiences have always been going to a movie theater, sitting there and the lights go down and a film comes on the screen that you don't know everything about, and you don't know every plot turn and every character movement that's going to happen. — Christopher Nolan

I try to be as efficient as possible because in my process, I think that actually helps the work. I like having the pressure of time and money and really trying to stick to the parameters we've been given. — Christopher Nolan

I have been interested in dreams, really since I was a kid. I have always been fascinated by the idea that your mind, when you are asleep, can create a world in a dream and you are perceiving it as though it really existed. — Christopher Nolan

Particularly, the actors, to have analyzed the script in great detail from the point of view of their specific character. So that they have a handle on exactly where the character is in the chronology of things. In that sense the actors become your best check on the logic of the piece, and the way in which it all fits together. They become essential collaborators. The main thing is you have to work with very smart actors. — Christopher Nolan

The atmosphere and the environment that you get on a Chris Nolan film that he and Emma [Tomson] create is one where you feel very safe and very confident and able to experiment with characters. It's a great place to be as an actor. — Christopher Nolan

If I could steal someone's dream myself, I'd have to go for one of Orson Welles. — Christopher Nolan

I'm not a big dreamer. I never have been.The only thing I've sort of obviously extracted from the research of dreams is that I don't think there's a specific science you can put on dream psychology. I think that it's up to, obviously, the individual. Obviously, we suppress things, emotions, things during the day - thoughts that we obviously haven't thought through enough, and in that state of sleep when our subconscious or mind just sort of randomly fires off different surreal story structures, and when we wake up we should pay attention to these things. — Christopher Nolan

I never meet anybody who actually likes the format, and it's always a source of great concern to me when you're charging a higher price for something that nobody seems to really say they have any great love for. — Christopher Nolan

A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat on a young boy's shoulders to let him know the world hadn't ended. — Christopher Nolan

I think for me, what I'm doing on set is I'm watching things happen as an audience member and trying to just look at, what's the image we're photographing, how will that advance the story and what will the next image be. — Christopher Nolan

Restfully reassured by his new friends, Joseph now nominated God in a new light, 'Man is God hesitant and God is Man hesitantly trying to help. — Christopher Nolan

I've done really well so far in my career by trusting the audience to be as dissatisfied with convention as I am, as a film-goer. You want to go see a film that surprises you in some way. — Christopher Nolan

I'm a very fortunate person. I get to choose the movies that I want to do. I have a lot of friends in this industry that don't get to do that. I grew up in L.A. A lot of my friends are actors so I realize every day how lucky I am to have this opportunity, so while I'm here, I'm going to try to do exactly what I want. — Christopher Nolan

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

We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt. - Cooper, Interstellar — Christopher Nolan

I'm taking a bit of a wait-and-see attitude towards 3D. — Christopher Nolan

What drew me to Batman in the first place was Bruce Wayne's story, and that he's a real character whose story begins in childhood. He's not a fully formed character like James Bond, so what we're doing is following the journey of this guy from a child who goes through this horrible experience of becoming this extraordinary character. That, for me, became a three-part story. And obviously the third part becomes the ending of the guy's story. — Christopher Nolan

I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. 'Alien', 'Blade Runner' just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons. — Christopher Nolan

My approach with actors is to try and give them whatever it is they need from me. Direction to me is about listening and responding and realizing how much they need to know from me and how much they have figured out for themselves, really. — Christopher Nolan

For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He's not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he's a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide. — Christopher Nolan

Film is the best way to capture an image and project that image. It just is, hands down. — Christopher Nolan

How could you understand? Do you know what it is to be a lover? To be half of a whole? — Christopher Nolan

I think there has been this increasing misperception that kids will not respond to something because it's also for adults. I think that often that tends to get underestimated. — Christopher Nolan

I have always been a big fan of the character and am more of a moviegoer than a comic book guy, there is always something about the character of Batman that is very elemental. There is a great powerful myth to the character and romantic element that draws from a lot of literary sources — Christopher Nolan

I like films where the music and the sound design, at times, are almost indistinguishable. — Christopher Nolan

I always find myself gravitating to the analogy of a maze. Think of film noir and if you picture the story as a maze, you don't want to be hanging above the maze watching the characters make the wrong choices because it's frustrating. You actually want to be in the maze with them, making the turns at their side, that keeps it more exciting ... I quite like to be in that maze. — Christopher Nolan

I don't ever like to feel myself in the position to demand of an actor that they trust I'm going to do something worthwhile. I feel a responsibility to articulate what it is I'm going to do. Whether that's showing them a full script or sitting down with them and describing my ideas in detail. It's a very healthy burden on me as a film director to be able to articulate what I want to do, to inspire actors, rather than just saying, take it on trust I'll be able to do something worthwhile. — Christopher Nolan

For me, as a film goer, I like nothing more than to sit in the cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I'm about to see or unfold on-screen. Every time we go to make a film, we do everything we can to try to systematise things so we're able to make the film in private, so that when it's finished it's up to the audience to make of it what they will. — Christopher Nolan

You're never going to learn something as profoundly as when it's purely out of curiosity — Christopher Nolan

Writing, for me, is a combination of objective and subjective approach. You take an objective approach at times to get you through things, and you take a subjective approach at other times, and that allows you to find an emotional experience for the audience. — Christopher Nolan

I studied English Literature. I wasn't a very good student, but one thing I did get from it, while I was making films at the same time with the college film society, was that I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well. — Christopher Nolan

Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts. (Leonard Shelby, Memento) — Christopher Nolan