The Film Life Quotes & Sayings

It's about the quality of the worry," I said. "I have happier worries now than I used to. — David Gilmour

I could spend my whole life photographing circuses. They combine everything I'm interested in - they're ironic, poetic, and corny at the same time. There's also something about a circus that's magical, sentimental, and almost tragic, like a Fellini film. — Mary Ellen Mark

It says something about the curious nature of film, that someone can be so alive on screen, when we're all too aware that they've passed. it underscores how we're mortal, and films are immortal (commenting on the death of Heath Ledger) — Leonard Maltin

Consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, it at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? — Viktor E. Frankl

People say, 'Oh, you're famous now, so you must go to L.A.' - I don't live in L.A. now - but it's like, why wouldn't you? The weather is amazing, the film industry's there, it's a great quality of life. — Nick Frost

There's more to life than..." Her eyes darted to the shore where Shannon had found a decent place to film them. "Jumping into the sack."
"Not much," he muttered. "There's a lot to be said for a good fuck. — Zoe Forward

He had always disliked the people who encored a favorite air in an opera - "That just spoils it" had been his comment. But this now appeared to him as a principle of far wider application and deeper moment. This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backward . . . was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself - perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defense against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film. He — C.S. Lewis

When accepting the American Film Institute Life Achievement award: I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat (Patricia Hitchcock), and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville. — Alfred Hitchcock

Most of the films that I've written, made in my life, I've written. Not all, but most I would say. — Paul Greengrass

New York may end up being no more than a scrim, a spectral film that is none other than our craving for romance - romance with life, with masonry, with memory, sometimes romance with nothing at all. This longing goes out to the city and from the city comes back to us. Call it narcissism. Or call it passion. It has its flare-ups, its cold nights, its sudden lurches, and its embraces. It is our life finally revealed to us in the most lifeless hard objects we'll ever cast eyes on: concrete, steel, stonework. Our need for intimacy and love is so powerful that we'll look for them and find them in asphalt and soot. — Andre Aciman

When making a film, I'm never concerned about whether the theme is new or whether it's been done before in cinema or not. I'm led to make films if there's a theme that interests me or I experience something in my own life that confronts me with something that I want to deal with. — Michael Haneke

I want to continue to produce film, television, and theater, and to make the most amazing music that I've made in my life. — Alicia Keys

Right before I got 'Sons of Anarchy,' I actually quit acting for 18 months and didn't read a single script, and I wrote a film. I felt like I needed to do something that I had control over, as an artist, and also just do something where I felt like I had some control over my life, as just a human, out in the world. — Charlie Hunnam

What NYU tried to teach had no relation whatsoever with the reality of what making a film is like. You cannot teach someone aesthetics. What you can do is say, "If you were in this situation and this is the kind of story you wanted to tell, here are a couple of ways you could try to make things work." But they didn't really do that. I did my three years there, and I have said at times that besides my childhood, going to NYU was the single most destructive experience of my life. It took me eight years to recover.
~Tom Dicillo — Nicholas Jarecki

I'm really keen to go back and do some theatre, but I can't afford to at the moment because we're getting married in September. And then I'm hoping to direct a film at the end of this year, and that means a year of your life without pay. — Richard Roxburgh

Film producer Samuel Goldwyn said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get," and that is absolutely how we all feel about luck, publishing, and life in general. — Sean Platt

I realize I have a lot of amazing opportunities, but I don't know how you can play a human being going through real human experiences without being able to walk down the street. If you can't live a real life, how do you play a real person? It always confuses me when actors work back-to-back-to-back with no break. If you live your life on a film set, how the hell can you relate to real people? You don't know what its like to not have people fussing over you all day, and that's not life - that's silly movies. I will always want to take breaks and I wouldn't be OK with losing that. — Emma Stone

I'm building a career as big as humanly possible so I can be in a 'Star Wars' project. My life goal is to have a character in the 'Star Wars' universe, film or other media. I just want to go to my grave knowing I played some character or some character based on my likeness was part of that world. — Rahul Kohli

Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come. I think people in the mass media, journalists, film makers and others, you can contribute to the collective awakening if you are awake and then your life will embody that awakening. — Nhat Hanh

Weirdly enough, I live in London - was born there and have lived there all my life - but I hadn't made a film in London for a long time. I hadn't found the right subject. I liked going away, to some far flung place. — Asif Kapadia

You don't necessarily have to go to film school to be a brilliant film maker. If you are a good listener and you study life, and you find that story that is buried within each and every one of us, and you figure out a way to bring that out. And sometimes it doesn't necessarily mean money or winning the lottery. — Tony Todd

I want to die, stripped, by myself, of all fantasies. That's the goal. I want to feel what is real, at the end, and only what is real. Grip fiercely with my eyes all that is around me
the people of my intimate life, the objects in the room, without the evasions of fantasies. — Frank Lentricchia

I hate Bollywood. The movies are all garbage, just terrible. It's my opinion; obviously, there are billions who like and love them. I don't like all the singing, dancing and all the dramatic crying. I have never seen a Bollywood film in my life. — Russell Peters

I want to confess. I thought that her story was comprised of scenes. I thought the tragedy could be glamorous and her grief could be undone by a sunnier future. I thought we could pinpoint dramatic events on a time line and call it a life.
But I was wrong. — Nina LaCour

Films are not the sole area in my life. Films are a passion. But it's not like I'll die if I don't get another movie. I'll grow, I'll flourish, I'll learn something new, but I'll always do something that I like. If I get the right film, I'll do it. I will not compromise for anything else. — Kajol

Eager watch was
kept for the first appearance of the legendary creature in the village, and it may be said that as far as
appearances went Basil Blake was all that could be asked for. Little by little, however, the real facts
leaked out. Basil Blake was not a film star, not even a film actor. He was a very junior person, rejoicing
in the position of about fifteenth in the list of those responsible for set decorations at Lenville Studios,
headquarters of British New Era Films. The village maidens lost interest and the ruling class of censorious
spinsters took exception to Basil Blake's way of life. — Agatha Christie

I'm able to lead my life as well as make a film. My wife and my friends and people around me know that I do tend to distance myself a little bit during the making of a film, but I have to, it's a natural part of the process for me because you are indulging in the headspace of somebody else, you are investing in the psychology of somebody else and you are becoming somebody else, and so there isn't enough room for you and that somebody else. — Guy Pearce

Miley is always on, she's always funny, she's always writing songs, she's always making music. The parallel of the film is like Miley says, going back to her home, going back to her roots. Getting back to Tennessee was art imitating life imitating art. — Billy Ray Cyrus

Live more than your neighbor. Unleash yourself upon the world and go places. Go now. Giggle, no, laugh. And bark at the moon like the wild dog that you are. Understand that this in not a dress rehearsal. This is it. Your life. Face your fears and live your dreams. Take it all in. Yes, every chance you get. Come close. And by all means, whatever you do, get it on film. — Jon Blais

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water. — Robert Bresson

We were up the whole night just talking, walking the city. You can walk those blocks forever, take a break on the edge of the fountain, eat pizza and snow cones, awed by the human carnival all around you. — Marisha Pessl

I like the hot-cold, the sugar-salt, being able to play over-the-top and dramatic things - in the same film. Just as in my life, I can be very funny and at other times almost extinguished. — Jean Dujardin

You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? — Nick Hornby

Ultimately, we want to provide people with a unique experience, and an unexpected one as well. We'd like people to leave the theater having questions, being intrigued, wanting to know more, and forming their own opinions about the characters and the world we created. We'd like the film and its images to stick around in people's heads, possibly be recalled every time the letter "H" comes up in everyday life. — Rania Attieh

I didn't need clothes. I was allowed the opportunity to act out moments you don't get the opportunity to experience in your own life, let alone as a character in a film. I didn't feel naked. — Marguerite Moreau

I figured I'd probably write 50 scripts in my life. Out of those 50, I figured maybe five would be produced, and that maybe one or two would be successful. So I always kind of expected I'd write at least one successful film in my life. [ ... ] The way it all came together was kind of like Murphy's law in reverse - I don't expect that kind of experience again any time soon. — Michael Arndt

The fact that you couldn't see Alfred Hitchcock's first film The Mountain Eagle, or that you couldn't see so many of F.W. Murnau's masterpieces, or that you couldn't see so many of Oscar Micheaux's really intriguing race melodramas, made with fierce independent spirit against all odds in '20s and '30s America. That stuff haunted me. They really did bring to life a sense of 20th Century history: cultural history, pop history, gender politics and race politics, socio economic history, all that stuff. It was bracing and instructive. — Guy Maddin

Watch the Film You Paid to See"

In my bedroom my weight is three times more
than what I'd weigh on Jupiter.
If your kitchen was on Mercury I'd be heavier by half
of you while sitting at your table.
On Uranus, a quarter of my weight is meat,
or an awareness of myself as flesh.
On Venus the light would produce a real volume around me
that would make me look happy in photographs.
This is how it is with quantity in any life. It's a fact
that on certain planets I'd actually be able to mount
the stairs four at a time. Think of the most beautiful horse
in the world: a ridiculously beautiful golden horse,
with a shimmering coat; it would weigh no more
than an empty handbag on Mars. You need
to get real about these things. — Todd Colby

I need a challenge. I need the intellectual stimulation. I'm a member of a community on each film, working in concert to try to bring an idea to life. It's a great job. — Harrison Ford

I am very concerned about our national heritage, and I am very concerned that the films that I watched when I was young and the films that I watched throughout my life are preserved, so that my children can see them. — George Lucas

Life is not always about happy endings. Sometimes it's about finding happiness in the ending you get. — Chip Rossetti

We actually needed the memory - if you see the film - as a very different kind of a plot device of revealing some information to our main character. So we chose to represent it as these sort of beautiful little snow globes, which kind of, weirdly, that's the way we think of memories - at least, most of the folks that we talked to. You think of these memories as being very pure and absolute and unchanging. That's not actually real life. — Pete Docter

It's all about hustling, whether it's in Boston or the film industry. I've been hustling my entire life - acting my way into trouble and acting my way back out again. I'm just fortunate to have had the opportunity to apply it in a different direction. — Mark Wahlberg

I never want to repeat myself. I can't imagine anything else as upsetting as realizing I'm redoing something I did before. For some reason, when it comes to film, I'm very good at not repeating myself. Even though in the rest of my life, I'm constantly repeating my mistakes. — Doug Liman

It's really interesting making films and actually seeing the life that they have in the subsequent years and seeing which ones stand up over time and which ones sort of fade away. — Guy Pearce

Airport bars are more like film sets, the bathrooms reminiscent of dormitories. Everyone is waiting to go somewhere, suspended in nowhere ... — Christy Hall

When it's good, cinema can be one of the most important things in a person's life. A film can be a catalyst for change. You witness this and it is an incredibly spiritual experience that I'd never lived before; well, maybe only in a football match. — Gael Garcia Bernal

It's your living room, it's your life, go nuts. You like Home Improvement? Tape it and go over it like it's the Zapruder film. — Dennis Miller

Most of my life, I thought that I would end up a novelist. But then, in New York City, after college, I started a company with a college friend where we made documentary video for museums. In that capacity, I shot, directed, edited and began to learn the vocabulary of film. — Jon Spaihts

Geekiness is that feeling of overwhelming passion for that thing in life that you focus on. Whether it be a nephew's first few steps or the timbre in one's voice when discussing the latest Cohen brothers film. — Harry Knowles

I've seen and swam and climbed and lived and driven and filmed. Should it all end tomorrow, I can definitely say there would be no regrets. I am very lucky, and I know it. I really have lived 5,000 times over. — Benedict Cumberbatch

It's not just women in film, 18-year-old girls feel pressure to do preventative injecting. I see someone's face, someone's body who has had children and I think, they're the song lines of your experience, and why would you want to eradicate that? I look at people sort of entombing themselves and all you see is their little pin holes of terror ... and you think, just live your life, death is not going to be any easier just because your face can't move. — Cate Blanchett

Film has played such a big part in my life, in my impressions of the United States. — Famke Janssen

There's a lot of dopes in life, and in film school. The interesting people are usually easy to find. — Tim Heidecker

It was slightly after midnight. Hundreds of people were at a movie theater watching the midnight showing of the opening day of the new Batman movie. Suddenly a man appeared from a side entrance. He was dressed in battle gear and appeared to have a gun. A few patrons were concerned. Many others thought he was part of a promotion for the film. Most of the crowd didn't notice him.
The Prophet of Life From: Midnight Movie Massacre — The Prophet Of Life

Pretty much all films I've seen that depict the life of Christ end with the Crucifixion, almost like the filmmakers don't know what to do after. — Joseph Fiennes

The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues. — Terry Pratchett

Doing a job, or even watching a film, can make a difference to your life, but I don't think it ever has an explosive impact where your life will never be the same again. It kind of seeps into your life, and perhaps realise you're a little more vigilant about certain things than you might have been. — Colin Firth

The film drama is the opium of the people ... down with bourgeois fairy-tale scenarios ... long live life as it is! — Dziga Vertov

Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever. — Kevin Smith

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER. — Walter Dean Myers

I'm not going to live my life unhappy and why should he and we talk about it and I think what's great about the film is that it shows is the meaning of family doesn't have to be as traditional as it once was, like you can make a family. — Nia Long

You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else, and it doesn't matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of intellect ... The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film ... I've been trying to get there from the beginning. I'm somebody who doesn't know, somebody who's searching. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

There's the life and there's the consumer event. Everything around us tends to channel our lives toward some final reality in print or on film. Two lovers quarrel in the back of a taxi and a question becomes implicit in the event. Who will write the book and who will play the lovers in the movie? Everything seeks its own heightened version. — Don DeLillo

TV and popular film and most kinds of 'low' art
which just means art whose primary aim is to make money
is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas 'serious' art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. — David Foster Wallace

When I did 'E.T.,' it sort of solidified the only family I know are these film crews. These gypsies. These filmmakers. That was the solidification and the clicking revelations of 'This is what I want to do with my life and this is where I'm going to survive.' — Drew Barrymore

But you can still find good films if you read your local film critics and are willing to drive a bit. You have to be a proactive film viewer to have the most provocative cinema life. — Stephen Hunter

The only time I felt a little too exposed was for a week then I started life-streaming for a couple of hours a day on Qik and Ustream. It became very much like the film 'We Live in Public.' — Jason Calacanis

Cinema has become my life. I don't mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film. — Pedro Almodovar

I love escaping into film, because everyday life I find quite troublesome. So any excuse to go into a cinema and say goodbye to the world for a couple of hours, or in a book or whatever, is great. — Alison Goldfrapp

We all know perfectly well that the man who lives out his life as a consumer," he writes in "The Coming Crisis in Psychiatry," "a sexual partner, an 'other-directed' executive; who avoids boredom and anxiety by consuming tons of newsprint, miles of film, years of TV time; that such a man has somehow betrayed his destiny as a human being. — Scott Stossel

In the almost film-like flitting-by of modern life, a man needs something to tell him, from time to time, that he is still himself, and nothing can give him this assurance in so comforting a manner as the "four feet trotting behind". — Konrad Lorenz

I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought - or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain ... — Ingmar Bergman

If you're strutting around Beverly Hills and hitting up these big industry parties every night when you're not making movies, then it's going to eventually consume you. But for me, I live most of my life in Boston. I do things no different from the way my buddies back home do them, except when I go to work, I go to a film set. — Chris Evans

The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images. — John Updike

Oh, yes, that never happened to me in my life before. It was a risky film, and I warned the producer. — Alain Resnais

The more intelligent the storytelling becomes and the deeper the character development, people will realize in film and television, like they do in real life, that human beings possess both good and bad. — Robert LaSardo

To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message. — Chester Elijah Branch

I think escapism is very important, certainly in my life. I love nothing more than escaping into the world of a film or a novel. To be involved in creating that for other people is a privilege. — Ben Barnes

Jesse [James]was known as a kind of Robin Hood character and also it was known that his exploits were somewhat dubious - however, he perpetuated this myth. Our film [The Assassination of Jesse James ] really takes place at the end of all that, the last year of his life, at the end of all that celebrity. — Brad Pitt

What I love in working on film is just working with actors. It's one thing to write scenes alone over a keyboard and to imagine the actions and reactions in your head, but it's a completely other thing to hear actors speaking your words, to see their bodies bringing the fullness of emotion, need, desire and pain to life right in front of you. It's amazing. — Dee Rees

I didn't want to go down the route of spending a year of my life making a movie that would never be seen. I may as well go down a route making a film that a lot of people will see, which is the whole idea behind cinema. — Ridley Scott

When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses. — Tom Ford

Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die. — Francois Truffaut

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much; my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold onto it. And then it flows through me like rain, and I can't feel anything but gratitude - for every single moment of my stupid, little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure; but don't worry ... .you will someday. — Alan Ball

I think when portraying someone that does exist in real life, there's an amount of respect and you want to do them justice. I don't really care what anybody says out there about what I did in the film; I care what these guys thought about what I did. If I'm making them happy, then I know I'm on the right track. — Joe Manganiello

I could sing and play as well. I've got some brothers; one of them is the drummer in the band. They're good musicians. I play for fun. They play properly. Music in general, I grew up in a house of musicians. Everybody's life has a soundtrack, I'm sitting here talking to you but there are horns beeping outside. I know I'm in New York. That's an element in the film as well. How strong that sense can be. — Jonathan Rhys Meyers

But the slice-of-life novel is really not so much a world apart as an interlude - like the conference or the film set, the holiday hotel or the voyage by sea or air. You enter it, you live there for a while, you leave again. Perhaps it will alter you; usually it will not. I suspect that the book which takes you into a world apart must also _trouble_ you, at least a little. And the troubling stays with you, like the grit in the oyster, and afterwards you are changed. — Susan Cooper

I like to be able to understand the feeling of the director, that a film corresponds to something in his life. Otherwise, it doesn't interest me much. — Louis Garrel

Once you capitulate to one dictator, does that mean that the next dictator or the next terrorist that says you're not going to make a comedy about
or a film at all about ISIS, all of us in public life have a responsibility right now to speak out and to say, 'No, Sony, you did the wrong thing' and to say to Hollywood, come behind
the other studios should come behind Sony and offer their support. — Ed Royce

I wouldn't want to do a Bollywood film per se, but I would like to do an Indian-language film. For some reason I think Bollywood has become synonymous with commercial cinema, which is song and dance and everything that is larger than life, and I am interested in the reality. — Freida Pinto

Saigon, U.S.A. aptly documents the birth of a new American community, uprooted in the aftermath of war and forever torn apart by the wounds of the past, yet one capable of healing against all odds. An engrossing yet succinct film that captures not only a major incident in Vietnamese American life, but also an important chapter of American history. A profound film that manages to confront us with the deepest sorrow while allowing us to be hopeful about what it means to be human. — Nguyen Qui Duc

Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling. — Stanley Kubrick

Pretty early on in making the first movie I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I felt like by that time I just found my niche, like this is what I was supposed to be doing. So I completely submerged myself into the world of watching movies, making my own movies, buying video cameras and lights. When I wasn't making a movie, I was making my own movies. When I wasn't making movies, I was watching movies. I was going back and studying film and looking back at guys that were perceived as great guys that I can identify with. It just became my life. — Mark Wahlberg

Sometimes I take the watch, or I take the shoes, but usually the souvenir is to take the life you had with those directors, or the crew - the camera person, the lighting person. When you finish a film it's like a little death. You had a family for a bit, and you finish the movie and you probably will never see each other again. — Jean Reno

It is a very important film, Life And Nothing More, in that what was filmed was inspired by a journey I had made just three days after an earthquake. And I speak not only of the film itself but also of the experience of being in that place, where only three days before 50,000 people had died. — Abbas Kiarostami

It is quite surreal having a film made about your life. The whole process of turning real life into drama is interesting in itself, but even more so when it is your own life being put into the narrative forge. — Heather Brooke

I did a film called 'Floating' early on that had a scene which was similar to a real-life situation I was in at the time. It involved me having a conversation with my father, who was dying. It was close to home and it made me realise acting wasn't just making faces for the cameras, it was a real art form. — Norman Reedus

'Faces' became more than a film. It became a way of life, a film against the authorities and the powers that prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want to, something that can't be done in America, that can't be done without money. — John Cassavetes

What we see on the TV screen, or the film screen or what we listen to in music, we have an illusion of what Prince Charming looks like or Cinderella's gonna look like in our life and we forget about what true love really means. — Shari Wiedmann