Jim Jarmusch Quotes

I start with actors that I know personally or I know their work, and there are things about their work or their presence or their own personality that make a character, that exaggerates some qualities and suppresses other qualities. It's always a real collaboration for me.

What I did was I completed the half-hour film, but before really showing it, I wrote two more sections for a potential feature film which I didn't think would really happen, but at least I had it in case.

A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published.

Baseball is one of the most beautiful games. It is. It is a very Zen-like game.

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.

I didn't get the degree because in my last year, for my thesis film I made a feature called Permanent Vacation and they'd given me a scholarship, the Louis B Mayer fellowship and they made a mistake.

I've always loved films, always. I studied literature and I went to Columbia in New York and I went to Paris for part of one year and ended up staying there.

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.

I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don't like looking back. I don't even like talking about 'em! So I'm really digging back in my memory because I don't like to sit and look at my films again.

When you separate an entwined particle and you move both parts away from the other, even at opposite ends of the universe, if you alter or affect one, the other will be identically altered or affected. Spooky. (Adam in Only Lovers Left Alive)

Good acting is about reacting, not tryingto express something, but reacting to a situation as the character.I don't like acting acting.

When I left Ohio when I was 17 and ended up in New York and realised that not all films had the giant crab monsters in them, it really opened up a lot of things for me.

I wanted to make an Indian character who wasn't either a) the savage that must be eliminated, the force of nature that's blocking the way for industrial progress, or b) the noble innocent that knows all and is another cliche. I wanted him to be a complicated human being.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

I thought The Limits of Control could be interpreted in two ways: as the limits of one's self-control; and as the limits of allowing other people's control over one's -consciousness - which I kind of thought was a double meaning that was appropriate.

It's hard to get lost if you don't know where you're going.

A cult classic ... both a celebration of the unlimited potential of the comic book form, and a perfect melding of inspiring, iconoclastic imaginations.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal - a small newspaper.

Separate two particles, place them at opposite ends of the universe, produce some effect in one, and the other will be identically affected.

Ghost Dog: In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.

When I hear the word 'independent' I reach for my revolver. At this point, what the hell does that mean? The English Patient is an independent film. Hootie and the Blowfish are alternative music. I'm the Queen of Denmark. I don't know what it means anymore.

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new film, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.

The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events.

For me, the music is always like the small rowboat I get into at the very beginning of my process.

Cricket makes no sense to me. I find it beautiful to watch and I like that they break for tea. That is very cool, but I don't understand. My friends from The Clash tried to explain it years and years ago, but I didn't understand what they were talking about.

I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down.

I didn't go to classes there, but ended up at the Cinematheque, and there it opened up even wider because there I saw a variety of films from all over the world.

If anyone tells you there is only one way, their way, get as far away from them as possible, both physically and philosophically.

Consequently, I get inspiration from all over the place. But it's not like a calculated thing on my part, or a way that I see myself. I'm just interested in things that move me, and I don't care where they come from. In fact, I'm interested if they come from a place I wouldn't expect, or would seem foreign to me on some level.

…Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

It is a sad and beautiful world.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]