Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have no personal life.
I love to scout locations.
I don't believe in defeat.
Journalism is not writing.
I cut 'Deer Hunter' myself.
I never second-guess myself.
I am not a preacher; I'm a reacher.
Nobody lives without making mistakes.
It's always a daily struggle to write.
Making movies is controlled anarchy, chaos.
I felt the need to unlearn my formal education.
There's a need to dig up the past and analyze it.
Writing, by nature, is a fairly solitary occupation.
War is war. Vietnam is no different from the Crusades.
I've had enough rejection for 33 years. I don't need more.
'Deer Hunter' is a movie; it is not an attempt to write history.
Who cares about seeing 10,000 helicopter assaults? That's spectacle.
Anybody who says they're bitter is sick in their soul. They've given up.
Being infamous is not fun. It becomes a weird occupation in and of itself.
Friendship and sentiment and the giving of one's words are very important.
Because people don't see me around a lot, I'm the source of all sorts of rumour.
There have been so many false things written about me by people who don't know me.
A film maker's energy and creativity don't have to end when he turns over his film.
When the rich kids got together, the most we ever did was cross against a red light.
It was just - I mean, 6,000 people giving you a standing ovation is quite an experience.
Most people I knew had been crippled by their educations. Some were even dying spiritually.
I'm a frustrated would-be architect who stumbled into the would-be business of making movies.
I have no interest in making a 'Vietnam' film, no interest in making a direct political statement.
There's nothing but brutality and bravery or cowardice that comes out of war. That's pretty much it.
I think 'American Sniper' is anti-war. It demonstrates the agony of the decision-making that goes on.
I have a very simple definition of a good movie: a good movie makes you forget you're watching a movie.
When a guy is perceived as macho, female editors aren't going to like it - because they all want to be men.
There's nothing good that comes out of war. It's simply hell on earth, and people survive, and people don't.
When I was fifteen, I spent three weeks driving all over Brooklyn with a guy who was following his girlfriend.
Hollywood has always been crazy. It's controlled anarchy. But how can you loathe something that has given you so much?
It's one of the things that movies do offer you, despite all of their hardships - they offer you moments of transcendence.
Encountering a real place enhances the performances of actors in subtle ways and changes the spiritual texture of the film.
It's silly - you go to a plastic chapel in Vegas, you get married in 10 minutes, and it takes you 10 years to get divorced.
If you can't stop somebody from working and making movies that you hate, what's the next best thing? Destroy them personally.
I feel very, very upset that, when it came time for me to get an Academy Award, that I didn't especially thank Clint Eastwood.
On a movie, you often work fourteen-, sixteen-hour days, six days a week, for six months. It is so easy to let up because of fatigue.
Even the details of a rifle, which are nothing but mechanical, if they are made carefully, with attention, become beautiful, satisfying.
It's one of the wonderful things that the Academy does - a talented person comes along like Mira Sorvino, and it elevates them up to stardom.
There's no service ribbon for people who fought in Korea. We lost over 30,000 men between 1951 and 1953 - as many as we lost in 15 years in Vietnam.
What distinguishes Vilmos Zsigmond from other cinematographers is, of course, talent but, more, physical stamina. You just can't be great without it.
All one has to do is look at old footage of the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and think of the people beneath those bombs. It's horrific.
You couldn't make 'Heaven's Gate' today. Even were you to quadruple the resources to make the movie, you couldn't make it because the people don't exist.
Would you ask Picasso to explain 'Guernica?' Would you ask Nabokov to explain 'Lolita?' Would you ask Tolstoy about 'War and Peace?' No, you wouldn't dare.
Does anyone remember who shot Kubrick's movies? Do you remember who shot David Lean's movies? No one remembers who shot 'Dr. Strangelove' or 'Barry Lyndon.'
The Indians believe all things have spirit - even the hail that comes from the sky is spirit. If you believe that, which I implicitly do, everything is alive.