Lav Quotes & Sayings

There is no border. I'm branding my films as Malay cinema, but it's just about cinema. Everything that I make is about humanity's struggle, so there is no border, really. — Lav Diaz

Everything in the Universe is interconnected. The health of our bodies affects the health of our minds, and the health of our minds affects the health of our society, which affects the health of our planet, and so on. We fail to recognize the intrinsic nature of everything in the Universe. We need to realize that everything connects to everything else, and what we do to one thing will dramatically affect what happens to every other thing. — Joseph P. Kauffman

I'm interested in the cultural thing - music, then eventually cinema. I think it's part of my struggle as a cultural worker. I'm not into the armed thing. I cannot be violent. — Lav Diaz

"Filipino" is the Spanish side of our history. The islands were named after King Felipe, so we became known as Filipinos. It's a brand, it's a name. But we're Malays. Before colonizers came to our shores, we were Malays. My praxis is about being Malay - the struggle of the Malays before we became Filipinos. — Lav Diaz

A victor only breeds hatred, while a defeated man lives in misery, but a man at peace within lives happily, abandoning up ideas of victory and defeat. — Gautama Buddha

I've never really been told my game reflects like I'm from Los Angeles. I'm always told that I have more of an East Coast type game. — Brandon Jennings

I tend not to be someone who's on all the time, or is always trying to make other people laugh. — Steve Carell

Why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale. — Guy Gavriel Kay

I'm very fatalistic about life. Whatever happens, happens. The imperative for me is that I do my contribution for my people, for my culture. I still want to make films for them. I still want to make films that confront our struggles. — Lav Diaz

There is no border in my films. You can see yourself in these stories. This is the greatest thing about the power of cinema. It's very present. It's all there. You can't escape it. — Lav Diaz

The best thing in every noble dream is the dreamer ... — Moncure D. Conway

I make films, and festivals, museums, and academia are embracing the work. It will be heard. It's bound to happen because cinema is universal. You create it, some people will notice it, some people will watch it. — Lav Diaz

I don't want to be labeled one thing. My main thing I care about is being able to create the things I want to do with my friends, whatever platform that is. — Derek Waters

The proper response, as Hanukkah teaches, is not to curse the darkness but to light a candle. — Irving Greenberg

I'm not hoping to see that day but I know that my cinema will reach Filipinos. I know that they will embrace it one day. It will happen. I'm very sure of that. I still have faith in cinema. I still believe it can affect change. — Lav Diaz

Thou God, seest me, she thought; it had been the text on the wall in the outside lav when she was a girl, and it always made her think of carbolic, and drains. — Lissa Evans

Tam: What begg'st thou then? fond woman, let me go.
Lav: 'Tis present death I beg; and one thing more That womanhood denies my tongue to tell.
O! keep me from their worse than killing lust,
And tumble me into some loathsome pit,
Where never man's eye may behold my body:
Do this, and be a charitable murderer.
Tam: So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee:
No, let them satisfy their lust on thee.
Dem: Away! for thou hast stay'd us here too long.
Lav: No grace! no womanhood! Ah, beastly creature,
The blot and enemy to our general name.
Confusion fall - — William Shakespeare

Your hands are no cleaner than mine, Maven. — Victoria Aveyard

I can easily go to America, or I can easily escape to some places in Europe with friends. But the place for me is the Philippines. The struggle is there. I cannot turn my back on it. It's a responsibility. — Lav Diaz

The novelistic attribute of my work is very much like the Russian way of creating novels. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky - their work has so many gaps. But for the reader, you cannot erase those gaps because they are important. They contextualize the whole struggle. My cinema is like that. — Lav Diaz

For me, graffiti and the complexities with which it is either absorbed or expelled from what is going on, is a really good comparison to the way I see my work being similarly expelled or absorbed into different types of discourse. — Richard Phillips

If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing. — David Douglass

Cinema is the greatest mirror of humanity's struggle. You see this alternative world, but you're part of it. Everybody is part of it. This is our world. — Lav Diaz