M. Night Shyamalan Quotes & Sayings

If ever I was feeling down I would go and write something. It's a form of escape. — M. Night Shyamalan

I consider myself an independent filmmaker. — M. Night Shyamalan

As a child, I probably knew phrases that other children didn't known, like "pitocin drip" or "myocardial infarction." Some kind of knowledge was always in the air. My parents would always talk about science at the dinner table, saying something about this patient or some other patient. So I guess for a nanosecond in early high school, I thought about going into medicine. — M. Night Shyamalan

I don't like to chase an audience. You can smell when someone is chasing an audience and it's not good. — M. Night Shyamalan

Giving should be a part of your routine, just like working out, eating, and sleeping. — M. Night Shyamalan

Anime is intended to have ambiguous features. That's part of the art form. — M. Night Shyamalan

If I had a big brother who was a year older than me or something, I probably wouldn't have ended up being a filmmaker. — M. Night Shyamalan

'The Last Airbender' is genetically engineered for me. I love martial arts. I study it. The movie's based on a lot of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. I was raised Hindu. — M. Night Shyamalan

Basically, when I'm writing something, I think about what is the subject of the piece. The subject of the piece is our fear of getting old, which is a variation on our fear of dying. — M. Night Shyamalan

My normal cycle for movies is eighteen months and each part is separate. — M. Night Shyamalan

I have worked hard and learnt that I have to make a decision - whether I am going to conform and protect myself or not. I chose not to. — M. Night Shyamalan

I find it very eerie when somebody is being really polite. — M. Night Shyamalan

My biggest fear in life is to be average. — M. Night Shyamalan

Always in life bad times will lead to great times. — M. Night Shyamalan

Great actors come with depth about how their character sees the world, and they completely defend it. They could defend it in a court of law, down to the reason the patient deserved this. — M. Night Shyamalan

Is it possible that there are no coincidences? — M. Night Shyamalan

Most of the time, I don't watch classics with anybody. I have to be by myself. That's my classroom. — M. Night Shyamalan

Filmmakers have to find the right materials to match their [voice]. — M. Night Shyamalan

My philosophy is to make movies with the biggest possible budget that will allow it to be made in an independent fashion. — M. Night Shyamalan

When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. — M. Night Shyamalan

Saw # Birdman . Such singular, audacious filmmaking. Can't stop thinking about the ending. — M. Night Shyamalan

I'm super confident about creative stuff, and I'm really not confident about human interactions stuff. — M. Night Shyamalan

There are scenes that were right on the edge, but I always try to err on non-indulgence. It's something that I'm very careful about, that I'm just leaning too hard into something. — M. Night Shyamalan

The whole world makes comic book movies now. — M. Night Shyamalan

You're never the same. You're degrading, or you're getting better. You don't stay the same. — M. Night Shyamalan

I wouldn't describe myself as a do-gooder. That's really more my wife. I'm kind of just the obsessed guy who's been writing and making movies since I was a little kid, just in a room and make it. — M. Night Shyamalan

I've been asked to direct pilots for a lot of shows. — M. Night Shyamalan

If I'm hesitant at all about an idea, then that's not the right idea. — M. Night Shyamalan

There is no one looking out for us. We are all alone. — M. Night Shyamalan

My directing style is long takes. The longer take I can do, the more I can think of not doing it in cuts, the better. — M. Night Shyamalan

The muscles that writers need for film are very different from TV muscles. Now, when I hire the writers and put the writers' room together, I know where their muscles need to be. — M. Night Shyamalan

When you say 'fear of the unknown', that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it's genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we're not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe. — M. Night Shyamalan

I'm so consistent that my director's cuts are usually 20-25 minutes longer than the released version of the movies. — M. Night Shyamalan

I grew up watching Steven Spielberg and scary movies. — M. Night Shyamalan

Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted ... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money. — M. Night Shyamalan

That's something we should be taught as kids: To be okay with ourselves. — M. Night Shyamalan

I'm from that world where I feel so comfortable making small independent movies. — M. Night Shyamalan

The beauty of the world of Unbreakable is that you're playing it for reality. It should never feel like a comic book movie. It feels like a straight-up drama. It's real. You're confronting the possibility that comic book characters were based on people that were real. — M. Night Shyamalan

Being insecure - I'm a master, a virtuoso - they can be handing me the keys to the kingdom and all I can think is, I hope I don't drop the key. — M. Night Shyamalan

'The Exorcist' is the scariest movie ever made. It just felt dead-on real, like you were watching the existence of the devil. — M. Night Shyamalan

One of the reasons I really love low budget filmmaking is you don't have to think about that as much. You can have more fun and be more playful and be freer creatively. — M. Night Shyamalan

So 'The Last Airbender' 's philosophy and culture feels like a beautiful idea to me: That we inherently have connections to the elements and what they teach us, and to each other. — M. Night Shyamalan

I have a naive outlook on life. That's who I am. — M. Night Shyamalan

Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters. — M. Night Shyamalan

My grandparents were classic Indian grandparents. My grandmother would put so much powder on her face that it was like a Kabuki play and she'd come down the stairs. I was like 8 or 9 years old. My grandfather apparently had no teeth because he would take out his teeth and put them in a glass, and then he would try to scare me with it. I started to try to scare them when I was a little older. — M. Night Shyamalan

I offer originality: you don't know what my films are like until you go to them. I think that's the reason I've been getting all this attention. — M. Night Shyamalan

I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them, anyway! — M. Night Shyamalan

I love stage actors. The pool of world class actors that have done theater [is big], there's a higher opportunity of grabbing somebody from that pool. — M. Night Shyamalan

When I was a kid, I had two great guilty pleasures. One was horror movies and the other was martial arts movies. — M. Night Shyamalan

There are a lot of things I can take, and a few that I can't. What I can't take is when my older brother, who's everything that I want to be, starts losing faith in things. I saw that look in your eyes last night. I don't ever want to see that look in your eyes again. — M. Night Shyamalan

I don't want to pretend I'm any cooler or smarter than I am. — M. Night Shyamalan

I feel most akin as an artist, in my life and my career, to Agatha Christie. — M. Night Shyamalan

You don't have your film finished when you have your director's cut finished. It's just a bunch of green screen. — M. Night Shyamalan

There's a monster outside my room, can I have a glass of water? — M. Night Shyamalan

Over the course of history, the people who are not scared go into the woods and are mauled by a bear, are not going to survive. — M. Night Shyamalan

I love The Killing, I love Homeland and Mad Men, all those shows that lean into the tone of things. — M. Night Shyamalan

I'm a big believer in our connection to nature. — M. Night Shyamalan

Are you in my dream too? — M. Night Shyamalan

I try to take B genre movies and treat them as if they're A dramas. Get the cinematographers, get the actors to do an A drama, but it just happens to be about aliens or ghosts or crazy people, or killers, or whatever it is. — M. Night Shyamalan

People break down into two groups when the experience something lucky. Group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. — M. Night Shyamalan

I love my stories being multi-layered, and coming at it from different angles, so that you don't understand the film's true emotional motivation until the very end. — M. Night Shyamalan

See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? — M. Night Shyamalan

Sometimes people can write really great scenes and even a great episode, but they can't see the bigger picture. — M. Night Shyamalan

The first two movies I directed failed, when I was 21 and 23, and that was the greatest thing that could have happened. — M. Night Shyamalan

I want to make a bunch of small movies. I'm really interested in that for me in the future. — M. Night Shyamalan

The beauty is that we can blur film and TV a little bit more. — M. Night Shyamalan

You don't want to watch classics with me 'cause I'm constantly writing notes. — M. Night Shyamalan

Each of the actors need to have their justification for saying something awful. You want everyone to have a positive and negative thing. Even a positive thing needs to have darkness in it. It needs to have depth. — M. Night Shyamalan

You're saying, "I'm gonna do this thing," and you have to be aware, as a rational human being, that you may not be allowed back in. — M. Night Shyamalan

I had a desire to do TV and wanted to get in, in the right way, knowing that I was going to learn a lot, along the way. — M. Night Shyamalan

This is the problem with being Indian. It's hard to be one of the family members. Everybody is white usually [in the movie]. — M. Night Shyamalan

I always thought I was going to be the film guy until I died. — M. Night Shyamalan

A TV show where all of the characters are trying to figure out what's going on, and the suspense of that, fits my [voice] really well. You feel their frustration, anger and fear, and then, when the reveal happens, their sense of dread or horror, or whatever it is, and I like to paint with those colors. — M. Night Shyamalan

Sometimes we do not do things that we wish to do, so others will not know that we wish to do them. — M. Night Shyamalan

The combination of the CGI, 3-D, and sound effects, it's just impossible to separate them. It gives you a more immersive experience, and I prefer that. — M. Night Shyamalan

I've never had an issue with studios. I believe in them as true creative partners in the process. — M. Night Shyamalan

The thing that's protected me creatively is that the movies have made profits. — M. Night Shyamalan

For instance, 'The Sixth Sense' had mediocre to bad reviews. Slowly, the audience pushed it and it received critical attention. — M. Night Shyamalan

You don't get to celebrate yourself unless you risk being mocked or rejected. As an artist, you cannot play it safe. You just can't. — M. Night Shyamalan

My secret to all casting, and specifically kids, is cast good human beings. — M. Night Shyamalan

When you find your voice, your life takes on grace. — M. Night Shyamalan

I storyboard every shot of my thrillers in general. I draw them out and do them. — M. Night Shyamalan

I knew the moment it happened, it was a miracle. I could have been kissing her when she threw up. It would have scarred me for life. I may never have recovered. — M. Night Shyamalan

There's no staying where you were. If you're not doing anything, your skills and point of view are atrophying. — M. Night Shyamalan

I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself. — M. Night Shyamalan