Von Sternberg Quotes & Sayings

I loved 1930's women's pictures'films by Josef Von Sternberg or William Wyler. So, I fashioned a style out of that. The integrity and ethos of what I would write, however, came from the films of Ousmane Sembene and from reading Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker. — Kola Boof

Carbohydrates from the Latin, carbo which means "yummy" and hydrates which means "cinnamon bun," are not something I can eliminate or even drastically cut back on. — Celia Rivenbark

I chose the American ones, more or less the last five years of the silent era, because those are the ones that aged the best in the way they tell the story. One, it's about human beings with context. It's a very classical story with feelings, with laughter, melodrama and it really works, the good ones - Murnau's American movies, John Ford's Four Sons, King Vidor's The Crowd, or the (Josef) von Sternberg movies. You can watch it now and it still works. I mean they are really, really good pieces so this is where I tried to work. — Michel Hazanavicius

The only way to succeed is to make people hate you. — Josef Von Sternberg

I've always been drawn to a certain kind of dark aesthetic in cinema and in film, to what's abjected or considered abject. I've been tremendously influenced by noirish cinema whether that's Von Sternberg or Scorsese in the 70s or Lynch, etc. — Anton Yelchin

I will never be a career actor, I don't think. I don't feel that I have the skill set to jump into it that way, although I wouldn't mind giving it a try. — Larry Mullen Jr.

Shadow conceals - light reveals. To know what to reveal and what to conceal, and in what degrees to do this, is all there is to art. — Josef Von Sternberg

The finished product is not finished when the actor is. The work is completed by a pair of shears. — Josef Von Sternberg

I studied Hitchcock and Josef von Sternberg under Richard Dillard at Hollins, and that year under his tutelage just completely rewired my brain. Both directors combine moral seriousness with great artistry and, certainly in Hitchcock's case, an enormous respect for plot, for its power to enthrall and delight. — Adam Ross

Marriage (noun): betting someone half your stuff that you'll love them forever. — Julie Johnson

Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on - developing and changing like our own world. — Cornelia Funke

Every light has a point where it is brightest and a point toward which it wanders to lose itself completely. It must be intercepted to fulfill its mission; it cannot function in a void. Light can go straight, penetrate and turn back, be reflected and deflected, gathered and spread, bent as by a soap bubble, made to sparkle and be blocked. Where it is no more is blackness, and where it begins is the core of its brightness. The journey of rays from that central core to the outposts of blackness is the adventure and drama of light. — Josef Von Sternberg

A shaft of white light used properly can be far more effective than all the color in the world used indiscriminately. — Josef Von Sternberg

In today's time, writing stuff that actually happened is touch-and-go, because you don't want to be too personal. If you are, then it probably won't relate to a mass audience. A lot of times you have to make it sound like it's about everybody else, but you really went through it. — Josh Turner

I'd like to take a walk far back in the flinty hills and search for a souvenir, an old double-bitted ax stuck deep in the side of a white oak tree. I know the handle has long since rotted away with time. Perhaps the rusty frame of a coal-oil lantern still hangs there on the blade. — Wilson Rawls