Pedro Almodovar Quotes

I think that there is always a part of utopia in any romantic relationship.

I make movies for my needs. My goal has never, never, never been to make shocking movie.

Cinema has become my life. I don't mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.

If I had not been successful as a director, then I'm sure I would still be telling stories. I would have continued on 16mm or found a different medium through which to tell them.

I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion.

I ask myself questions that journalists don't dare to ask or don't know how to ask.

To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider ... To all actresses who have played actresses, to all women who act, to all men who act and become women, to all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother.
- Dedication, Todo Sobre Mi Madre

Already when I was very young, I was a fabulador. I loved to give my own version of stories that everybody already knew.

Each actor is a very different person, and each one has to be directed very differently.

Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be. When I was moving around with the lens, I discovered things that the naked eye would not have.

If I make a movie in English, the money will come from Europe, so that I can keep my independence and freedom. The way they produce in Hollywood doesn't fit me.

All my movies are difficult to classify because they are very eclectic in mixing genres.

I used this line to demonstrate how important colors are in movies: It's not a caprice.

When I start writing, the first line might come from reality, but the second and the third one, I have to write it. So this is the genesis of my creation. If I want to know what happens, if I want to find out the secret, I have to write it.

A dead love never dies.

The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images.

With this silent film, I wanted to hide what was going on in the clinic. I wanted to cover it up in the best cinematic way and in an entertaining manner.

My first memory is of the eyes of my brother; he was looking at me all the time.

Never again work in the same conditions in whichyou made your first film. It's good to take risks, but not thatmuch risk.

The Flower of My Secret is definitely more based in true emotions. I also wanted to make something more realistic, but not naturalistic or simple.

My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.

Of course I want my films to look really good, but every single element is chosen for a reason. It's telling something in the story.

Both sex and death are eternal themes. You could make thousands of movies on this theme, and whether you have a human being who is painting, singing, making a film, writing, these are the themes that you will come back to and return to. If you don't have any of these artistic expressions, sex is one of the only gifts that nature gave you for free, so it is very important to celebrate it. And then, with death, we are condemned to that. This is absolutely present in our lives.

The 1980s really ended for me in 1992 with the film Kika.

My mother was an extremely creative woman, despite the fact that she lived the life of a rural housewife.

I was born at a bad time for Spain, but a really good one for cinema.

La Mancha is a very macho, chauvinistic society. I saw very clearly that my life had to be in Madrid, and I liberated myself from my mum and dad after high school.

I'm a very dull passenger. I don't speak. I don't have sex. No alcohol. I don't do drugs. The thing that I like about flying is that I feel like I can really concentrate. I used to write many things, and many ideas for my movies belong to this moment where I'm not anywhere specifically in terms of time and space and geography. I am suspended, and this suspension fits me very well.

The life I live due to my work is difficult to share.

Cukor is one of my favorite directors. He was a master at directing women.

Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, madam. And one can't be stingy with these things, because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed you are. - Agrado from Todo Sobre Mi Madre

There's something about uninterrupted singing that just doesn't work for me, because at some point, I need my characters to talk. Without meaning to offend anyone, a musical like 'Les Miserables' would be the last thing I'd ever be interested in.

If I'd lived like my characters, I would have been dead before I'd made 16 films.

I'm an artist, and I'm part of every decision in a movie.

Hospitals are places that you have to stay in for a long time, even if you are a visitor. Time doesn't seem to pass in the same way in hospitals as it does in other places. Time seems to almost not exist in the same way as it does in other places.

I'm more interested to show the darkest places of myself, and I don't joke about it.

After the enormous success of All About my Mother, all the awards and everything, I wanted to start a movie in exactly the same place that I used to be before. I wanted to show that all of the success had not changed my perception.

When I was young I thought: when I am 60 my necessities will be very different. As I get near that age, I realise they are similar to what they were when I was 25.

Yes, women are stronger than us. They face more directly the problems that confront them, and for that reason they are much more spectacular to talk about. I don't know why I am more interested in women, because I don't go to any psychiatrists, and I don't want to know why.

Anything that is not autobiography is plagiarism.

Once we actually have the production script after many rewrites, at that point is when I start to decide what the look and colors will be. I work like a painter, even though I'm working in three dimensions. I'm working with chairs. I'm working with walls. But even things like the floor or the walls that people might think are not important, they actually do influence the visual look of the film. These are also things that I have to think about.

I think that the consciousness of passion makes you act very differently.

The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion.

You can make a thousand different movies about the same subject.

I am partly not conscious of structure with my movies, but this is when I am writing. I leave my mind very free, and then I correct it after.

In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government.

For there to be communication within a couple, it is enough for there to be only one person who communicates or who really wants to communicate. Even though a couple consists of two people, if one of the people in a couple puts all their effort into moving a couple along they will move along.

I think it's a change that I did not intend at the time but it is clear that, from The Flower of My Secret on, there is a change in my films. A lot of the journalists have very generously attributed this to my growing maturity.

There is a mysterious stillness and intimacy of a woman doing her hair and make-up which attracts me.

Success has got no taste or smell and when you get used to it, it's as if it didn't exist.

I tried to think about these two issues very freely. With sex, I think I can manage with that. With death, this is a more difficult theme for me. I'm not a believer, even though I'm baptized. I don't practice. I don't believe in God, so I feel very alone facing death. What I discovered is that the only way to recognize death is if you are part of life, if you are part of sexual pleasure, if you link it with sexual pleasure.