David Cronenberg Quotes & Sayings

It's impossible to make a movie out of 'Naked Lunch.' A literal translation just wouldn't work. It would cost $400 million to make and would be banned in every country of the world. — David Cronenberg

The only authentic literature of the modern era is the owner's manual. — David Cronenberg

Or was it a more sinister thing? Was the iPhone a malevolent protean organism, the stem-cell phone, mocking him who had cameras with real physical shutters whose sound you couldn't turn off? Promising to replace every other device on earth with its shape-shifting self - garage door openers, solar timers, television remotes, car keys, guitar tuners, GPS modules, light meters, spirit levels, you name it? — David Cronenberg

I see technology as being an extension of the human body. — David Cronenberg

But with my last film, Spider it was agony. The money was always disappearing, nobody got paid, it was very difficult - and it's very distracting from the process of making the movie, of course. So I think things have been getting harder and harder. — David Cronenberg

I also think the relationship I have with my audience is a lot more complex than what Hitchcock seemed to want his to be - although I think he had more going on under the surface as well. — David Cronenberg

For her, the message from Romme, the love letter's message, was: Cut off your left breast, that rustling bag of insects, because if you don't, those insects will spread their insect religion to your entire body. — David Cronenberg

The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting. — David Cronenberg

To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American. — David Cronenberg

It was apparent to me that religion was an invented thing, a wish-fulfillment thing, a fantasy thing. It was much more real, dangerous, to accept that mortality was the end for you as an individual. As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, so if you're thinking of murder, if your subject is murder, then that's a physical act of absolute destruction because you're ending something, a body, that is unique. That person never existed before, will never exist again, will not be karmically recycled, will not go to heaven, therefore I take it seriously. — David Cronenberg

When I am creating art, I have absolutely no social responsibility. It's like dreaming. — David Cronenberg

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to. — David Cronenberg

Do I shock you? We are very playful here. It's a good tone for an operating theatre. It is a theatre, after all. — David Cronenberg

She pulled the phone back to look at her photo, then, drawn by its ruthless intensity, kissed the image. Her lips left semen smears on the screen. Commodity fetishism at its finest. — David Cronenberg

The widest, most open, most accepting aperture, the one providing the narrowest, most demanding depth of field. She and Naomi had joked about the sexuality of camera apertures, that they needed to write a woman's monograph on the symbolism and cultural relevance of the mechanics of image-making as it related to sex, so that, for example, stopping down the fixed 35mm lens's diaphragm - elegantly composed of nine leaf-shutter blades - to a tight f/16 would be the equivalent of executing a Kegel pelvic floor exercise. — David Cronenberg

I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do. — David Cronenberg

The internet is now a forum for public prosecution. — David Cronenberg

I'm just observing the world. I was born into it, like you were, and then I found out there were some really disturbing aspects to being alive, like the fact that you weren't going to be alive forever - that bothered me. — David Cronenberg

Mischievous smile. I remember reading about Calvin Klein's daughter. Every time she pulled down a lover's pants, she was confronted by her father's name on the band of his underwear. A total sex killer. — David Cronenberg

It had been Ari who proposed the term Kimunism for the strange form of xenophobic nationalism practiced under the Kim family dynasty; it was not really socialism, nor was it communism in even the Maoist form, despite the heaviness of its cult of personality. Ari had felt that it was the severity and chimeric plasticity of the system, so provocative, that made it appealing to French intellectuals. — David Cronenberg

The process of making a movie has expanded in terms of effort and time for the director, doing commentaries for the DVD for example, finishing deleted scenes so they could be on the DVD, and doing things like a web blog. — David Cronenberg

You know, those unboxing videos you see everywhere on YouTube. They are the epitome of consumerist fetishism. — David Cronenberg

At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible. — David Cronenberg

That's rule number one for a photographer, isn't it? Fill your frame? — David Cronenberg

The warrior priests worship insects as sacred beings, and believe that the ingestion of insects ennobles man and keeps him from descending into bestiality. — David Cronenberg

Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition. — David Cronenberg

I never thought I was doing the same thing as directors like John Carpenter, George Romero, and sometimes even Hitchcock, even though I've been sometimes compared to those other guys. We're after different game. — David Cronenberg

We can't worry about meaning. Ari proposed to us that meaning is a consumer item. Some people manufacture it through religion, philosophy, nationhood, politics, and some people buy it. But an artist is not a manufacturer. — David Cronenberg

It's interesting about diseases, how they peak and tank. — David Cronenberg

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult. — David Cronenberg

Well, yes,when you no longer have any desire, you are dead. Even desire for a product, a consumer item, is better than no desire at all. Desire for a camera, for instance, even a cheap one, a tawdry one, is enough to keep death at bay." a wicked smile, an inhale of the cigarette with those lips. "If the desire is real, of course. — David Cronenberg

If the audience lets that stuff wash over them, you know - almost like music, rather than dialogue - and doesn't fight it, then they'll have a much easier time rather than being sort of frustrated and confused otherwise. But if you get in the right state of mind it really does work quite well, — David Cronenberg

Nathan seemed to have absorbed his sense of journalistic ethics from old movies about newspaper reporters. For Naomi, internet sampling ad scratching was a completely valid form of journalism, presenting no ethical clouds on its open-source horizon. — David Cronenberg

Nah, I've done sex scenes before, you know, like in video. — David Cronenberg

For one shining moment, you were the king of fear, she said. — David Cronenberg

We allowed each other a number of "philosospasms" per year; these were episodes of obsessive/compulsive behavior, often involving sexual affairs with students, or periods of deep, intricate despair, or occasionally intense political adventures which made us very vulnerable to the media and the public and caused us great discomfort. But our agreement was that we would support each other during these spasms, and would treat that momentary reality as though it were the only true reality, which, of course, in so doing, it was. — David Cronenberg

She thought so hard all the time. Always writing, writing. I think it was a mercy killing. She asked him to kill her and he did. And then, of course, yes, he ate her. — David Cronenberg

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution. — David Cronenberg

See, you can't rewrite, 'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm, the tumbling out of the words, is a betrayal, and it's a sin, Martin, it's a sin.
Hank (Kerouac)to Martin (Ginsberg) in the film Naked Lunch — David Cronenberg

Send these images of me through the internet out into the universe, where I will continue my out-of-body existence. — David Cronenberg

Are we playing Faster Fingers or are we thinking?" Faster Fingers was their code for supplanting brain/memory with Google Search. — David Cronenberg

I work with my dreams or nightmares. — David Cronenberg

Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to. (William Lee-Naked Lunch) — David Cronenberg

He wouldn't perform without a recording now, she was certain, like a poet working in the oral tradition who had been contaminated by the advent of the recording device and so insisted that all improvisations be saved for posterity. — David Cronenberg

The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That's why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies. — David Cronenberg

It always amused me to observe the pathetically desperate hunger expressed in popular culture for life-forms on other planets, when underneath the very feet of these seekers of aliens, and roundly ignored by them, were the most exotic, grotesque, and fabulous life-forms imaginable. — David Cronenberg

I don't think that the flesh is necessarily treacherous, evil, bad. It is cantankerous, and it is independent. The idea of independence is the key. It really is like colonialism. The colonies suddenly decide that they can and should exist with their own personality and should detach from the control of the mother country. At first the colony is perceived as being treacherous. It's a betrayal. Ultimately, it can be seen as the separation of a partner that could be very valuable as an equal rather than as something you dominate. — David Cronenberg

As an artist you look into yourself to understand the human potential to be all kinds of things that are not necessarily pleasant but are real - a criminal, a murderer, a sadist, a rapist; to be all of these things that many people are. You can't allow yourself to say, 'I'm a different species from those people.' Because you aren't.
The criminal as monster is kind of common. That's very convenient because you can then say, 'Of course I'm not a monster, therefore I'm not a criminal therefore I have no potential in tern of criminality.' And that lets you off the hook. That gives you a nice wall between yourself and them. — David Cronenberg

As a citizen, of course. As a parent, of course. But as an artist, that's where the paradox is - your responsibility is to be irresponsible. As soon as you talk about political or social responsibility, you've amputated the best limbs you've got as an artist. — David Cronenberg

I don't mind writing so I didn't find that difficult, it's just a question of finding the time to do it. I kind of like the direct connection with the fans actually, it's pretty neat. — David Cronenberg

Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost. — David Cronenberg

Philosophy is surgery; surgery is philosophy. — David Cronenberg

Each kid has a different level of expertise and some of them are very raw and inexperienced and some are incredibly mature and experienced. So you just have to go with what they are rather than have some abstract technique that you're going to try to apply to them. — David Cronenberg

The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It's not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff. — David Cronenberg

Let's put it this way, when I was casting, I cast Viggo first and then found someone who could play his wife, rather than the other way around. So for me he's still the lead character. — David Cronenberg

I have a real aversion to ghosts because I don't believe in them. I think ghosts are actually a religious concept, because it means you believe in an afterlife. And I don't. — David Cronenberg

I was aware that I was taking inordinate pleasure in small, technological events and objects, and that this was probably a semiconscious tactic meant to evade confronting certain agonizing life events which were probably not resolvable and were destined to cause unrelenting pain and distress; yet the pleasure was real, and I took it greedily. — David Cronenberg

All romances end in tragedy. One of the key people in a romance becomes a monster sooner or later. — David Cronenberg

Of course for many years directors have had to go on the road with their movies and promote them and I've done that since the beginning. So that's not new but the forms of it are different such as with the internet. — David Cronenberg

As a filmmaker, I ask questions but don't have answers. Moviemaking is a philosophical exploration. I invite the audience to come on the journey and discover what they think and feel. — David Cronenberg

You're seeing me develop, not only as a filmmaker if you've seen my earlier films, but you're seeing me kind of learn how to be a human, how my philosophy has evolved. — David Cronenberg

The artist's duty to himself is a combination of immense responsibility and immense irresponsibility. I think those two interlock. — David Cronenberg

So pathetic," he said, with a grunt. "So sad. Such a cliche. You can be so fond of cinema, of world literature, the classics, but then, when you find yourself playing out a classic scene, you don't feel ennobled, linked to that greatness. You feel...pathetic. — David Cronenberg

So not only can you not imagine dying, you can't really imagine existence before you were born. — David Cronenberg

Japanese medical people are traditionally very strange and creepily poetic. — David Cronenberg

We are at a major epoch in human history, which is that we don't need sex to recreate the race. You can have babies without sex. This is the first time in human history that has been true, and it means, for example, we could do some extraordinary things. — David Cronenberg

When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy. — David Cronenberg

She took his hands in hers and placed them on her breasts. They ache a bit, you know. After all, they've been penetrated by two hundred and forty tiny titanium pellets. Like asteroids and a cosmic dust shower. — David Cronenberg

I'm simply a nonbeliever and have been forever ... I'm interested in saying, 'Let us discuss the existential question. We are all going to die, that is the end of all consciousness. There is no afterlife. There is no God. Now what do we do.' That's the point where it starts getting interesting to me. — David Cronenberg

You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally. — David Cronenberg

If you put yourself in a group of people you cannot work with it's obviously going to be a disaster. — David Cronenberg

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos. — David Cronenberg

But when you're writing a script - for me anyway - you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be. — David Cronenberg

Consciousness is the original sin: consciousness of the inevitability of our death. — David Cronenberg

To not be photographed daily, even by oneself, to not be recorded and videoed and dispersed into the turbulent winds of the net, was to court nonexistence. — David Cronenberg

Like clocks, recording devices were everywhere embedded; everything was being recorded at every moment, like a huge, infernal Mac Time Machine backup system that created backups of backups regressing into infinity. Who would play these back? Who would pick among them like the survivor of a hideous bombing looking for the rags once worn by his dead and naked mother? — David Cronenberg

The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art. — David Cronenberg

But so strong is our desire for meaning, an innate desire, that we construct meanings where there are none. — David Cronenberg

Technology is us. There is no separation. It's a pure expression of human creative will. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe. I'm rather sure of that. — David Cronenberg

We're all photojournalists now. It's no longer enough just to write. — David Cronenberg

The way a child discovers the world constantly replicates the way science began. You start to notice what's around you, and you get very curious about how things work. How things interrelate. It's as simple as seeing a bug that intrigues you. You want to know where it goes at night; who its friends are; what it eats. — David Cronenberg

It had occurred to her that the ultimate expression of Tom Wolfe's 'saturation reporting' was possibly at hand: the copycat murder of the journalist, with the murderer finishing the piece and filing it, complete with photographs and videos. — David Cronenberg

Listen to the crickets, she said, nodding sagely as she spoke, understanding everything. — David Cronenberg

All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true. — David Cronenberg

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do; They confuse fantasy with reality. — David Cronenberg

Reality is neurology, and is not absolute. — David Cronenberg

You start selling the movie before you make it. — David Cronenberg

Long live the New Flesh! — David Cronenberg

Arosteguy poured more sake for both of them. "I love warm sake. How brilliant to create a drink at body temperature." He shook his head. "The Japanese. Feared by the West for so long, and now fading into their beloved sunrise. Or sunset. First militarily, then economically, and now, only gastronomically. And I need to become Japanese at a time when everyone wants to become Chinese. The Chinese call the Japanese 'the little people,' I've been told. That could have to do with the miniaturization of island species. I must do a study. — David Cronenberg

I don't have a moral plan, I'm a Canadian. — David Cronenberg

For me, it's just a normal artistic endeavour to explore the dark side. Certainly, I'm not alone in it. Artists generally don't like to accept the version of reality that society and culture hand them. They want to know what's really going on. So you're always looking in the ceilings, under the floorboards and behind the walls, trying to find the mechanisms, the structures, and the truth. I find that often leads you into some dark places. — David Cronenberg

Many wonderful, creative people have won Oscars, so if you win one, you're in their company. — David Cronenberg

I can't imagine a life without humor. Especially if you have an existential understanding of life, you must acknowledge the absurdity of it all. — David Cronenberg

It's my conceit that perhaps some diseases perceived as diseases that destroy a well-functioning machine actually turn it into a new but still well-functioning machine with a different purpose. The AIDS virus: look at it from its point of view. Very vital, very excited, really having a good time. It's really a triumph if you're a virus. See the movies from the disease's point of view. You can see why they would resist all attempts to destroy them. These are all cerebral games, but they have emotional correlatives as well. — David Cronenberg

For example I don't work with William Hurt the same way that I will work with Viggo. They're different guys and they work in different ways. So a good sensitive director has his general style and technique and personality that he uses but you don't impose that on the actors. — David Cronenberg

The arrogance of the intellectual. The delusion that we have more balls in the brain to juggle than most people. — David Cronenberg

You did not get a very good review from Dr. Trinh," he wrote. "She was very quick to contact me and to let me know that I should stay away from you because you obviously wanted to do damage to the memory of our dearest Celestine. She also said that she did not feel that you were very intelligent, or maybe you were just American, she's not sure... — David Cronenberg

My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There's nothing else, and when we die, that's it. No afterlife. — David Cronenberg

Sex is the invention of a very clever venereal disease. — David Cronenberg

Do you remember when you found out you wouldn't live forever? People don't talk about this, but everybody had to go through it because you're not born with that knowledge. — David Cronenberg