George Cukor Quotes

You're just poor cornball provincial people, you critics; you just don't know what the hell you're talking about.

The truth is, a director wins an Oscar for a writer's script and actors' performances.

You can't have any successes unless you can accept failure.

You learn out of bitter experience, trial and error. Life teaches you that. As sincere as you all are, you can't learn it all in school.

I choose my actors well and get to know the quirks of their personalities - and, most of all, I share humor with them. Then I keep my eyes open when they rehearse and perform, because you never know where the next stimulation comes from.

So many directors say nothing beautifully, and so many others say great and profound things but have no idea how to read a light meter or arrange a shot.

People who aren't complicated in real life come through as pretty bland on the screen. Most great performers are not very happy and well adjusted. Perhaps that's the price they pay for being originals.

Give me a good script, and I'll be a hundred times better as a director.

Be adventurous, but, of course, with some sense of reality. You shouldn't say, "There's nothing I can't do," because you know damn well there are things you can't.

We've all been tired and thought we wanted a long vacation when all we needed was a few days off, but didn't know it.

I work through the actors, and the more successful I am, the less my work is apparent.

If I were very handsome, maybe I'd have been an actor.

Looking for love is tricky business, like whipping a carousel horse.

I was a stage-struck kid.

Real talent is a mystery, and people who've got it, know it.

It never occurred to me that I could live in California. Now I can't imagine living anywhere else.

From the director's point of view, it's infinitely easier to do violence than to do a good dramatic scene.

When one deals with stars, he is dealing with intelligent people. If they weren't intelligent, they wouldn't have arrived at the star pinnacle.

Women's director! Well, I'm very pleased to be considered a master of anything, but remember, for every Jill there was a Jack. People like to pigeonhole you - it's a shortcut, I guess, but once they do, you're stuck with it.

When it goes wrong, you feel like cutting your throat, but you go on. You don't let anything get you down so much that it beats you or stops you.

Unless the story line carries the scenes, the scenes don't really mean anything.

If she was a victim of any kind, she was a victim of her friends.