Spike Jonze Quotes & Sayings

Obviously technology has become such a big presence in our lives and, I definitely know, in my life. — Spike Jonze

It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping ... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs. — Spike Jonze

Everything in L.A. is - it's just an easy place to live in. The houses are nice, the backyards are nice, you got the ocean right there and the mountains behind you; there's an idealised easiness to the way you live and the whole environment. — Spike Jonze

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out. — Spike Jonze

Nicolas Cage, I would love to work with him again. He's just a fearless madman. He'll go anywhere you want to go. He would not say 'no' to anything. — Spike Jonze

On set, there's a lot of pressure. But it sort of heightens the moments. — Spike Jonze

Arcade Fire has such intimacy and epic-ness, at the same time, and that's really inspiring. — Spike Jonze

I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible. — Spike Jonze

I remember when MySpace came out. It did do something pretty incredible - which was unite people around the world with common interests and common tastes. — Spike Jonze

Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me. — Spike Jonze

There's a difference between stress and pressure. — Spike Jonze

I'm always amazed when any actor can decipher my direction. — Spike Jonze

I have a home phone number, and I like it! It's like a throwback already. — Spike Jonze

I think the thing that is meaningful is when I can tell that someone's been affected by the movie or by anything I made. — Spike Jonze

The past is just a story we tell ourselves. — Spike Jonze

I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to things from parents. — Spike Jonze

You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it. — Spike Jonze

Some of the best ideas come from sheer discovery, and not by some masterminded, preconceived genius. — Spike Jonze

You can go on Nike's website and choose exactly what fabrics and colours and shapes you want your sneakers to come in. — Spike Jonze

If you focus your energy on the camera, it takes away from the time you have to focus on the performances. — Spike Jonze

I'm a little slow, so forgive me if I'm inarticulate. — Spike Jonze

As a director, you never get to watch other directors work, and you also don't get to collaborate with other directors that much. — Spike Jonze

The Beastie Boys are guys I loved before I met them, and when I got to know them, we started a magazine together, and we started making videos together, and a lot of it came out of us just cracking ourselves up, like going to the fake mustache store and buying fake mustaches. — Spike Jonze

I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around. — Spike Jonze

After 'Where the Wild Things Are,' I guess I felt more confident as a writer. — Spike Jonze

I loved Fugazi, the D.C. hardcore band, because they always did everything themselves. They had their own label, and the CDs always cost nine dollars, the T-shirts always cost eight dollars, the shows always cost five dollars, no major label. — Spike Jonze

I like people that define their own values. I am much more interested in somebody who has their own definition of what they value, their own definition of what success is, their own definition of what love is. — Spike Jonze

I don't know what life was like 1,000 years ago, but I imagine there was the same struggle: people trying to connect with each other. — Spike Jonze

I definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring. — Spike Jonze

I love people that willfully defy what you're supposed to be and create their own definition of their selves. — Spike Jonze

'Where The Wild Things Are,' I think I could have written on my own. When I brought Dave Eggers on, I already had 60 pages of notes. I technically could have, but I don't think I was ready to. I needed him to be there and help me. — Spike Jonze

I feel like you only have so much time to make stuff. I'm definitely aware of that. I'm also excited about it. — Spike Jonze

On everything I do I'm always taking someone's money, whether it's a movie studio or a record label. Somebody's paying for it, and I'm always respectful of that. But I'm never going to compromise. — Spike Jonze

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot. — Spike Jonze

I definitely liked the Muppets. I definitely liked Yoda in 'Empire Strikes Back' and Chewbacca. I don't know if I was a fan of puppets or those, like, specific characters. — Spike Jonze

Kids are so fiercely opinionated, that if they love the Harry Potter books and they go see the movie, they'll be the first to say, 'That was wrong! They didn't get that right!' They're storytellers themselves. They're critics. They're going to have the critical opinion. — Spike Jonze

You get a buzz when getting texts: 'Oh, someone's thinking about me.' — Spike Jonze

I just want to make whatever is exciting. — Spike Jonze

I'd love to do a musical one day - a theatre musical. — Spike Jonze

Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book? — Spike Jonze

I'm hesitant to make grand statements because I feel like that it's not exactly what I'm writing about. — Spike Jonze

As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy. — Spike Jonze

If you compromise what you're trying to do just a little bit, you'll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you're suddenly really far away from where you're trying to go. — Spike Jonze

Chris Cooper I got to work with many times. — Spike Jonze

I think the way Win Butler writes, I really identify with it. He writes very emotionally and very cinematically, and I just connect with his sensibility. — Spike Jonze

Any conversation I have with anybody that's real is always revealing and inspiring. — Spike Jonze

The things that are really out of control, and scary, are emotions - of people around you, that are unpredictable, or those in yourself which are unpredictable. — Spike Jonze

The world is becoming nicer and easier, but that doesn't mean we are any less lonely or any more connected. — Spike Jonze

I was only going to go to college because that's what I thought you were supposed to do. — Spike Jonze

Johnny Knoxville went from struggling to pay his rent to being on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' in the course of, like, a month. — Spike Jonze

Be willing to get fired for a good idea. — Spike Jonze

I guess a lot of things I make are relationship movies. Maybe all movies are relationship movies, because they're all about how we relate to each other. — Spike Jonze

I've done a couple of interviews, and I realized how uncomfortable I felt as soon as I started talking. — Spike Jonze

I never knew how to do anything before I did it, really. — Spike Jonze

Samantha Morton is one of the best actresses in the world. — Spike Jonze

If I can make one generalised statement, and generalised statements are never entirely true, nobody wants to be talked down to, kids included. — Spike Jonze

I would love to make video games. — Spike Jonze

Movies, they take years of my life, so I'm fortunate that I get to work in a lot of different mediums. — Spike Jonze

What the world is like from a nine-year-old's point of view? My memory is that nothing is explained to you, you've got to try to figure it out, pick up clues from the people around you, try to figure it out from their reactions. — Spike Jonze

As creatives, it's a hard thing to push, to make something you're truly excited about, especially if you've written 100 different concepts and they keep getting shot down. — Spike Jonze

I met Arcade Fire on their first record, 'Funeral.' I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.' Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighbourhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood. — Spike Jonze

If I heard somebody else say, 'I worked on a movie for five years', I'd be like, 'What? How could it take that long? What were you doing?' — Spike Jonze

I knew I could write infinitely about relationships. That's the most beautiful, most confusing, most rewarding, most heartbreaking thing in our lives - and not just romantic relationships: that's all relationships. — Spike Jonze

Obviously, movies and music videos are different because they're different lengths, and in a movie, you have more time to explore an idea. But I feel like they're all the same, really. — Spike Jonze

I like Kanye, and I care about him. — Spike Jonze

There's great food everywhere, and even McDonald's uses nice wood now. — Spike Jonze

The market groups and demographics said, 'Teenage guys don't read magazines.' — Spike Jonze

When you're close to somebody, you can never really know how they're experiencing the world. — Spike Jonze

I skated and rode bikes on ramps, and my mom was always super supportive. She was one of the only divorced moms in the neighborhood, so all the other parents looked down upon her for letting her kids do that kind of thing. — Spike Jonze

Felt is not the easiest thing to animate. It's very flimsy. — Spike Jonze

I like naps. I don't drink coffee. — Spike Jonze

There are a lot of kids in the world. People seem to keep having them. — Spike Jonze

I'm fortunately not, like, typecast. I don't have to just do one kind of thing; I can do all kinds of things that reflect different parts of me. — Spike Jonze

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it. — Spike Jonze

I've got to say, I've probably seen a lot more of the Three Stooges than of the Marx Brothers. — Spike Jonze

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity. — Spike Jonze

If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself. — Spike Jonze

I'm not a film-snob. — Spike Jonze

The invention of the iPod changes how you use music. Suddenly you have music everywhere. — Spike Jonze

When I'm making stuff, the thing that excites me most is not the result, but the process and trying to do something I've never done before. — Spike Jonze

Don't differentiate between 'This is a job' and 'This is what I'm doing for fun.' It's all simultaneous. — Spike Jonze

I think because I'm not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood. — Spike Jonze

The best videos were the ones where I became friends with the artists first. — Spike Jonze

I love when me and my friends don't know how to make something - there's that risk of failure, which should be there. If it's guaranteed not to fail, it's something you already know how to do. — Spike Jonze

When you're talking about the idea of loving your ex, and being able to hold on to that amidst all the other feelings of being heartbroken or sad or missing something that's gone --something dies when a relationship ends. It is a death because that thing that was the two of you together was alive and now it won't be and the only two people who really knew that thing was alive are the two of you. No one else knows. — Spike Jonze

I am better at math than spelling. — Spike Jonze

A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have such a different reaction to it. — Spike Jonze

Every actor I've worked with I want to work with again. — Spike Jonze

Is artificial intelligence less than our intelligence? — Spike Jonze

I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older. — Spike Jonze

I worked at this bike shop called Rockville BMX, and I started going on this summer tour with this one company. One summer, we ended up in California, and I got to hang out with the guys who made 'Freestylin' - Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman. — Spike Jonze

The strengths and failings of a relationship depend entirely on your ability to talk about your feelings. — Spike Jonze

Even in this world where you're getting everything you need and having this nice life, there's still loneliness and longing and disconnection. — Spike Jonze

Sometimes I think I've felt everything I'm ever gonna feel and from here on out I'm not going to feel anything new - just lesser versions of what I've already felt. — Spike Jonze

Maurice Sendak never - I remember he said something that was very striking because it's something I never thought about. I always loved his work, and he said, 'I don't really view myself as a children's book author. I just try and write about childhood as honestly as I can.' — Spike Jonze

I definitely check my phone for texts a lot - like, 'Did anyone text me? Is anyone thinking about me? Does anyone love me?' — Spike Jonze

Getting to work on the thing that you're always thinking about anyways is like the biggest--that's the goal. — Spike Jonze

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something. — Spike Jonze

I feel like every movie, I've learned more and more about what I think of the world and what I'm trying to figure out. — Spike Jonze

I'm very nervous about taking jobs. I always make sure that, if I'm going to work with somebody, that they really understand what it is that I want to do. I'd rather not take the job than be vague about how I'm going to do something and run into trouble later on. It's a hard thing to negotiate. — Spike Jonze