Kevin Smith Quotes

Don't be afraid to do weird stuff, so long as you do it cheaply and cover everyone's bets. Be bold. Be stupid, if you have to: so long as you don't hurt anybody, what's it matter how dopey your dream is? If I hadn't made TUSK? If I'd let it die as a podcast? I wouldn't have three other movies I'm now making within the span of a year. Some folks will try to shame you for trying something outside the norm; the only shame is in not trying to accomplish your dreams.

One of the reasons I always looked up to [George] Carlin is he looked like your grandfather but, acted like your best friend. Most of the adults in my world were adults and acted like adults and had job-type jobs and bills and pressures and stopped playing a long time ago. And George Carlin was a guy that the more he aged the younger he seemed. It was odd because he was still sagely and wise. But he was such a role model for me.

People tend to romanticize this job. So, it's fun to let the air out of it.

BRODIE:
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA.

People always ask me if I hate the nuns. Do I make my movies extra dirty to piss them off? I always say no, that's not the point. To a Catholic, a movie is only dirty if it makes you want to have sex more. If it makes you feel sick, disgusted, ashamed of your own body, then it's not a dirty movie at all. It's a Catholic movie. And I make very Catholic movies.

In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least trying to accomplish all of your wildest dreams in life.

With what you don't know about me, I could just about fill the Grand Canyon.

If you grow up fat, you have to try harder.

Why do my movies make people feel so dead inside?

You know, comics and movies, even if you take a comic and turn it into a movie, we can't all be Joss Whedon.

Indie film isn't dead, it just grew up.

Happiness can't be bottled. It can't be smoked, swallowed, shot or ejaculated. And there is no end game: you never cross the finish line and are suddenly happy. Even when all your wildest dreams come true, you still pursue happiness.

Failure is success training.

There was never any down side to casting friends over professionals. It was always fun seeing folks who never performed before stretching their wings.

The first few films I made didn't look good at all, and I wasn't trying to make them look good. People dig 'em because they like the content.

Long time no see. I only pray the caliber of your questions has improved.

There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you feel, it's the failure that people project when something disappoints. You're back to ground zero, where there's no expectations, and that's where I like to be.

I'm always cribbing from real life. I'm not a very creative filmmaker.

I wanted to get my movie noticed WITHOUT spending any ad money. So I made a bit of a spectacle. I recorded lots of podcasts. I bickered with hate groups. I criticized critics. I banged pots together. I did everything I could to raise awareness without raising any money to do so.

AZRAEL:
No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater ... than central air.

I sympathize far more with heavier people than I ever will with thin. I'll never be thin. Let's be honest.

I really would love to play a hannibal lector or PSYCO type character.

People are bursting out of the closet, rejecting their parents' wishes to keep the faith. Atheism is becoming mainstream.

Haven't two hundred years of failed missionary work overseas taught anybody anything? You can't convert people to anything - whether religion, or something as inane as our flicks.

Stop ... stop, that's the next generation of fans ... How dare you pass judgment on those 12-year-old girls who like vampires! They need to be encouraged because in six years they'll be 18-year-old girls who like vampires and are into all sorts of goth-permissive and whatnot. Don't Poo-poo it. There's a plan, and it's working.

I think the advent of the Internet gave us all a big boost, because by the time the Internet became mainstream and you could get it in your home, a lot of us were used to dealing in fan culture, writing to magazines or anything at the back of comic books.

It's silly that anyone in this world tells you that there are only certain people that can marry you.

In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing. It makes sense. But I had always admired filmmakers who made movies that didn't sound like them at all.

Whenever I'm not shooting, I'm in the editing room with my footage. While the crew is taking 15 minutes to an hour to set up the next shot, I'm behind the Avid, putting the flick together.

I know what it feels like to carry a lot of weight in a society that's very image-conscious. It's a thin person's world, and we try to navigate within it without being made fun of.

I don't have to write to South West buddy. In an hour South West gonna come looking for me!

In Hollywood you kind of fail upwards

Everybody's got one killer story. It doesn't take talent to tell that story, it just takes experience.

GOD DOESN'T HATE FAGS OR
ANYBODY ELSE FOR THAT MATTER.
GOD SAVES! THEN, GOD PASSES IT
TO GRETZKY - WHO ROOFS THAT
SHIT, TOP-SHELF! THEN GOD AND
GRETZKY HIGH FIVE & BELLY-BUMP,
CELEBRATING THEIR HOCKEY
PROWESS. AND NEVER ONCE DO
THEY GIVE A SHIT IF ANYBODY'S
GAY OR NOT.

If you're lucky, you go from being a movie fan to a movie maker.

If you're alive, kick into drive. Chase whimsies. See if you can turn dreams into a way to make a living, if not an entire way of life.

It's kind of debatable whether or not the advertisement model is effective. Like whether Nielsen works.

It's a joyful thing, being a Catholic. I can't even think about sex without thinking about bodily waste.

Any book is a self-help guide if you can take something from it.

I say what other people won't.

Based on the timely and helpful responses to my support issues, I feel that I made the right decision to become a customer earlier this year. LuxSci is definitely a quality, customer-oriented business.

And the podcasting - I swear to you - on its worst day, the podcasts are better than our best films. Because they're more imaginative, and there's no artifice, and it's far more real.

My job is to say, 'This is how I see the world. Do you agree?'

For years, my job was to make the movie inexpensively. And I could bring it in. What I can't control are the costs of marketing.

I try never to worry in general. Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.

What He really hates is the shit that gets carried out in his name. Wars. Bigotry. Televangelism.

- Rufus, Dogma

From now on, any flick I'm ever involved with, I conduct critics screenings thusly: 'You wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week.'

We love dirty oral on the Down Low, but no going steady.

I made a deal with myself that whenever I smoke weed, I have to be doing something productive: writing, recording, cutting a podcast, editing, etc.

One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity.

Only someone who doesn't understand art tells an artist their art somehow failed. How the fuck can art fail? Art can't be graded, because it's going to mean something different to everyone. You can't apply a mathematical absolute to art because there is no one formula for self-expression.

Controversial' as we all know, is often a euphemism for 'interesting and intelligent.

T-shirts and long pants make me easier to find in a crowd, but also easy to disappear in a crowd because if I am wearing this and suddenly I am not, it's like a Harry Potter invisibility cloak.

All these people who say success changes people; well, no, it just magnifies what's there.

I saw Richard Linklater's film 'Slacker' for my twenty-first birthday. That was the moment when it all seemed possible. This guy gave me hope.

Don't let anybody tell you different, man: The main goal in life careerwise should always be to try to get paid to simply be yourself.

Im gonna try to pay for CLERKS III myself. As much as I love the crowd-funding model, thats an advancement in indie film that belongs to the next generation of artists. I started on my own dime, and if Im allowed, I should finish on my own dime.

I'm not even supposed to be here today.

There's a trick to being whatever you want to be in life. It starts with the simple belief that you are what or who you say you are.

Like its author, this book is dedicated to Jen Schwalbach - the gorgeous mother of my child, the seductive temptress who keeps me faithful, and the friend I've always had the most fun with. My best friend, even.
Also quite like the author, this book is additionally dedicated to Jen Schwalbach asshole.
Everything above also applies here, obviously, except the "mother of my child" part: referencing my kid and my wife's brown eye in the same sentiment might come off as crude or something.
(And I have a heart: Please don't go telling my kid you read in her old man's book that she's some kinda Butt-Baby. She's gonna have a hard enough time being Silent Bob's daughter - the daughter of the "Too Fat to Fly" guy.
Also: Pleas don't tell my daughter I dedicated tge vook to her mother's sphincter. That'd be weird)

Other filmmakers make their movies and put them out and that's that. For me, for some odd reason, it goes deeper than that.

I don't hate you 'cause I'm crazy... I'm crazy 'cause I hate you.

Dudes know I'm not a threat. Chicks know I'm not a threat.

So often, over the course of our day-to-days, we forget the details of what shapes us most in life. Sure, we'll pay through the nose to have our weddings videotaped, but can we say the same thing about the first time we discovered masturbation, or the moment we realized that the true nature of the opposite sex is to lie and humiliate (and I'm not just talking about women here)? Usually not.

Brodie Bruce:
I LOVE THE SMELL OF COMMERCE IN THE MORNING!

Generally, I wake up, honestly it's creepy, but I wake up around 4:20.

It's not like someday my kid's gonna be standing over my grave, and somebody's gonna hang her a folded flag and say, 'You know what? This is 'cause he did 24 hours straight on Twitter.' But it's just one of those little personal victories, like, 'I wonder if I can do this.' And I did it. A stupid goal, but I accomplished it. Life's all about ... for me, at least ... having very stupid achievable goals. That way, you always feel like a winner.

I liked hockey, and I still like hockey.

In Hollywood you just fail upwards.

It's like a dream come true. When somebody is paying you to talk about yourself, you've won.

Storytelling is my currency. It's my only worth. The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out.

Why take life seriously? No one gets out alive anyways.

My Father taught me how to be a man – and not by instilling in me a sense of machismo or an agenda of dominance. He taught me that a real man doesn't take, he gives; he doesn't use force, he uses logic; doesn't play the role of trouble-maker, but rather, trouble-shooter; and most importantly, a real man is defined by what's in his heart, not his pants.

It's taken me 15 years to step behind a camera and make something everyone agrees looks like a movie.

The writer crafts their ideal world. In my world, everyone has really long conversations or just picks apart pop culture to death and everyone talks in monologue.

And George Carlin was a guy that the more he aged the younger he seemed.

When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express.

The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out. That's why I'm always hoping society never collapses because the first ones to go will be entertainers.

I didn't get into film to win Academy Awards. I wanted to have a conversation with the audience.

It's too expensive, that's the thing nobody wants to talk about. It is too expensive to make movies. That's not true, it is too expensive to market movies. Making movies is not.