Abel Ferrara Quotes

Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.

The last day of your life is still going to be a day.

The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.

Movies are only the result of where we are as human beings.

I grew up in the Bronx. I'm into rap music.

I don't want to live anywhere where I'm breathing two million cars' fumes and paying a zillion dollars for the right to be totally hassled.

I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.

My life is proof that I don't need you to do what I do. If there's no one to see it, I'll watch it.

Where I come from you're not raised to think on your own. It's not that you're pushed to read the Bible. The Bible is read to you.

No one can stop me from talking about my movie.

There's no such thing as a non-final cut director.

When I talk about drugs and alcohol, I'm talking about sex addiction, gambling addiction, eating addiction, throwing-up addiction. I'm not talking about mental illness.

I'm about my characters.

It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.

As an old-time New Yorker, it's not that I miss the '70s and '80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.

The more you get into any religion, it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself. How you look to help other people, and how you get out of this 'I, me, mine' type of thing.

Even if you're a poet sitting in your room writing a poem, you're still in the world - although I guess being a poet is a different than having to deal with 40 or 50 people to raise a couple million bucks and all that bullshit.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

I come from a world where you get the film done, that's a success.

I don't care if I get $50m to do a film.

But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.

I'm a lapsed Buddhist like I'm a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy. He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him, he brought his food with him, he brought his language with him, he never spoke a word of English.

I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

The actors that I love to work with, they're hard on me. They're pushing me.

I don't know what DVD commentaries are about. I'd like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.

The world is constantly changing. You're constantly learning and you have to be willing to get off your mark, and get off your spot and take that knowledge you have not to fix yourself into a place but to keep going.

My existence is about making movies, so I've just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I'm there.

I direct, and I make movies I can't finance. I can't raise money. I can't sell anything. I make things.

I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.

I don't care if I get $50 million to do a film.

Life is what happens when you're doing other things, right?