Favorite Quotations ~  Film-Making, 7 Kindle edition: Living the Creative Life

"No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough." ~ Roger Ebert

Bruce Willis

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. ~ Orson Welles

For me, movies should be visual. If you want dialogue, you should read a book. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers. ~ Mel Brooks

A movie doesn’t have to do everything. A movie just has to do a couple of things. If it does those things well and gives you a cool night at the movies, an emotion, that’s good enough. ~ Quentin Tarantino, EW, 6/16/04

Once you have found the right shot to introduce the scene—written your first declarative sentence—then the rest flows. You’ve found the key to the whole scene. ~ John Huston, American Heritage, April/May 1992

I'm a filmmaker. I'm an artist. I've chosen to work in history the way someone might choose to work in still lifes or landscapes. ~ Ken Burns

Once you finish a film, it doesn't belong to you anymore — it belongs to the audience to interpret it the way they feel like interpreting. ~ Clint Eastwood

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love -- you can't give a reason why. ~ Paul Newman

Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners. ~ Jimmy Stewart

I throw a spear into darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find it. That is intellect. ~ Ingmar Bergman

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