Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Unhappy endings can be as cheap as happy endings.
It's easier to control people when they're afraid.
To be honest, I think that Republicans love terrorism.
Anything you could ever want or be you already have and are.
I got put on jury duty, which is where I learned how to write.
You learn by trying and failing. Just a lot of hard work and mistakes.
I feel profoundly blessed. I feel it's a great privilege to make any motion picture.
The gift of life is the gift to suffer sometimes and to embrace it, heartbreak and all.
If you just work on your craft hard, that's your only hope of doing anything worthwhile.
There's always hope. Never give up. Walk slowly and drink lots of water. It ain't a sprint.
Bush was in a shithole on September 10th. 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Life just happens the way it's supposed to happen. It delivers you to where it delivers you.
There's nothing better than an actor who is really, really hungry to show everything they've got.
The idea that anyone would think their religious ideas make them morally superior is just preposterous.
The religion itself may have some great ideas, but I can't take it seriously if it's blatantly exclusionary.
Christianity has been responsible for plenty of horror and death in the world, all supposedly in God's name.
It's not easy to follow Jesus' example, and if you go to church it doesn't mean you're automatically doing it.
It's my experience that endings are never easy, and I think I'm not alone among filmmakers or writers in this.
I think film was my passion without it being declared like a job that I could have, or a career that I could have.
I think if religion closes discussion or exchange of ideas or curiosity about other views, it's not true to its core.
Gay marriage is a complete red herring to distract everyone from the economy and the war and health care and education.
I think that everybody does hustle in order to survive. That doesn't mean lying - it's more about how you handle situations.
You can't force a movie to happen. Movies happen when they're supposed to happen. Everything happens in God's time. I really believe that.
When most people turn on their TVs, they don't expect a frank discussion of philosophical ideas in their practical context. Or any context.
The great lesson about filmmaking is never take "no" for an answer, especially if you have a lot of passion and inspiration to do something.
What we assert, very often can become our reality. To some degree, everybody can try to shape and control their fate. Everybody picks an identity.
It's absurd that we're so quick to criticize Muslims for being fundamentalist when Christians can be just as extreme and fanatical and frightening.
I think audiences deserve the benefit of the doubt. I prefer to be surprised by them rather then just assume they'll react negatively to any new idea.
It's a closing of the mind that happens when you want to be lazy and go with the easiest answers, like the media do all the time in their sound bytes.
That's just how I see things. I think things that are the most dramatic or tragic can also look the most ridiculous and funny. That's part of being human.
The closer you stay to emotional authenticity and people, character authenticity, the less you can go wrong. That's how I feel now, no matter what you're doing.
Some of Jimmy Stewart's performance in 'It's A Wonderful Life' is some of the most disturbing performance he ever did, when he falls apart and when he breaks down.
The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.
I think what makes compelling fiction or cinema is when you're basically taking the most intense moments of experience and you're creating a song or a narrative out of it.
Quite frankly, the bible is filled with advice that you'd never, want to follow. "Don't cut your hair on a rainy Thursday because locusts will eat your farm" kind of thing.
The Republicans just want to bankrupt the government. They think that the government should do nothing, except maybe support the military. So terrorism is perfect for them.
You know, veterans come home and they may not be bipolar, but after they've been through a war with PTSD or a head injury, their families have a handful when they come home.
That's what takes people out of the fight half the time. They get hit and half the reaction is your ego is saying, 'I cannot believe that person just lit me up - how humiliating.
That's what takes people out of the fight half the time. They get hit and half the reaction is your ego is saying, 'I cannot believe that person just lit me up - how humiliating.'
What do we have in life, really? If we're lucky we get to a certain age, and we have each other. We have the food we like. We have our crazy little rituals. And we have each other.
I suppose what I like about Zen is that the teachers are constantly questioning your insight and challenging it, looking for sloppiness or laziness in it, and ways you can go past that.
The endings for all my characters seem sufficiently human and messy for me to feel comfortable with them. In some ways they have only moved an inch, but sometimes an inch is a great distance.
I think any spiritual experience that's worthwhile is not about ego and it will humble you in some way. And also, a Zen monk once said to me, 'If you're not laughing, then you're not getting it.'
I'm always looking for a way to surprise audiences. That's, I feel, my job as a director. I felt that Amy Adams playing a tough woman in 'The Fighter' was a surprise. People saw her as a princess.
I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes.
The Fighter was about a family struggling to overcome and fighting each other sometimes, and I went back and rewrote this script which I had written for my son initially because my son has mood disorder.
'The Fighter' was about a family struggling to overcome and fighting each other sometimes, and I went back and rewrote this script which I had written for my son initially because my son has mood disorder.
I think I land somewhere between Scorsese and Capra in what I'm drawn to emotionally; I'm drawn to very intense emotion. Capra freaked people out when they saw Jimmy Stewart lose it in 'It's a Wonderful Life.
I think I land somewhere between Scorsese and Capra in what I'm drawn to emotionally; I'm drawn to very intense emotion. Capra freaked people out when they saw Jimmy Stewart lose it in 'It's a Wonderful Life.'
David O. Russell's best films are thrilling high wire acts that run the moment to moment risk of tumbling to the ground. In his latest, "Joy," Russell has more trouble than usual keeping his balance on the wire.