Spike Jonze Quotes

Getting to work on the thing that you're always thinking about anyways is like the biggest--that's the goal.

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.

After 'Where The Wild Things Are,' which was this big, long five-year project, I spent a year making small things.

After 'Where the Wild Things Are,' I guess I felt more confident as a writer.

The world is becoming nicer and easier, but that doesn't mean we are any less lonely or any more connected.

I feel like everything I make is personal to me.

Any conversation I have with anybody that's real is always revealing and inspiring.

The past is just a story we tell ourselves.

I'm always inspired by other filmmakers, whether it's a shot or the way they handle tone.

Nicolas Cage, I would love to work with him again. He's just a fearless madman. He'll go anywhere you want to go. He would not say 'no' to anything.

I'm not a film-snob.

I like naps. I don't drink coffee.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.

Our subjectivity is so completely our own.

There's great food everywhere, and even McDonald's uses nice wood now.

I respect people that are die-hard film people, but I started on video. I started on Hi8 video and mini-DV, and I made skate videos. So, I love film, and I love the way it looks, but I also love the way crappy video looks, or VHS. I've always been a fan of whatever the look is that's appropriate for what the feeling is.

Sometimes I think I've felt everything I'm ever gonna feel and from here on out I'm not going to feel anything new - just lesser versions of what I've already felt.

I worked at this bike shop called Rockville BMX, and I started going on this summer tour with this one company. One summer, we ended up in California, and I got to hang out with the guys who made 'Freestylin' - Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman.

Every actor I've worked with I want to work with again.

I don't want to make a movie till I have an idea I have to make. I don't want to make a movie just to make a movie.

I like people that define their own values. I am much more interested in somebody who has their own definition of what they value, their own definition of what success is, their own definition of what love is.

I knew I could write infinitely about relationships. That's the most beautiful, most confusing, most rewarding, most heartbreaking thing in our lives - and not just romantic relationships: that's all relationships.

Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.

I was only going to go to college because that's what I thought you were supposed to do.

I think the way Win Butler writes, I really identify with it. He writes very emotionally and very cinematically, and I just connect with his sensibility.

I love people that willfully defy what you're supposed to be and create their own definition of their selves.

I've done a couple of interviews, and I realized how uncomfortable I felt as soon as I started talking.

You get a buzz when getting texts: 'Oh, someone's thinking about me.'

I just want to be who I am, as I am.

I definitely check my phone for texts a lot - like, 'Did anyone text me? Is anyone thinking about me? Does anyone love me?'

Is artificial intelligence less than our intelligence?

Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book?

I don't know what life was like 1,000 years ago, but I imagine there was the same struggle: people trying to connect with each other.

Movies, they take years of my life, so I'm fortunate that I get to work in a lot of different mediums.

I like Kanye, and I care about him.

I definitely liked the Muppets. I definitely liked Yoda in 'Empire Strikes Back' and Chewbacca. I don't know if I was a fan of puppets or those, like, specific characters.

I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

Obviously technology has become such a big presence in our lives and, I definitely know, in my life.

A lot of times, you have an idea, and all the things you are thinking about might fuel it. But that's not where the idea came from.

I am better at math than spelling.

Me and my friends had BMX magazines and skate magazines, and I was a photographer who made skate videos.

When I was 20 years old, I had no plans to ever be a filmmaker.

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around.

I started directing videos at the same time that Michel Gondry was starting to direct videos, and I watched what he'd do. They all seemed to be pushing some new visual effects idea, but never just for spectacle. They all captured a feeling.

When I'm making stuff, the thing that excites me most is not the result, but the process and trying to do something I've never done before.

I guess a lot of things I make are relationship movies. Maybe all movies are relationship movies, because they're all about how we relate to each other.

You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.

If you focus your energy on the camera, it takes away from the time you have to focus on the performances.

I've got to say, I've probably seen a lot more of the Three Stooges than of the Marx Brothers.

There's a difference between stress and pressure.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

I'm always amazed when any actor can decipher my direction.

I love when me and my friends don't know how to make something - there's that risk of failure, which should be there. If it's guaranteed not to fail, it's something you already know how to do.

Moms are people, too. Moms make mistakes, too.

Everything in L.A. is - it's just an easy place to live in. The houses are nice, the backyards are nice, you got the ocean right there and the mountains behind you; there's an idealised easiness to the way you live and the whole environment.

As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.

Johnny Knoxville went from struggling to pay his rent to being on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' in the course of, like, a month.

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

Felt is not the easiest thing to animate. It's very flimsy.

Samantha Morton is one of the best actresses in the world.

It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping ... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.

'Where The Wild Things Are,' I think I could have written on my own. When I brought Dave Eggers on, I already had 60 pages of notes. I technically could have, but I don't think I was ready to. I needed him to be there and help me.

I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to things from parents.

The Beastie Boys are guys I loved before I met them, and when I got to know them, we started a magazine together, and we started making videos together, and a lot of it came out of us just cracking ourselves up, like going to the fake mustache store and buying fake mustaches.

Don't differentiate between 'This is a job' and 'This is what I'm doing for fun.' It's all simultaneous.

I like hiring people based on a feeling - this person gets it - rather than what they've done in the past.

I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older.

Kids are so fiercely opinionated, that if they love the Harry Potter books and they go see the movie, they'll be the first to say, 'That was wrong! They didn't get that right!' They're storytellers themselves. They're critics. They're going to have the critical opinion.

I think if something's emotionally real - and I'm not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life - you can't really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.

I definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring.

Be willing to get fired for a good idea.

I feel like every movie, I've learned more and more about what I think of the world and what I'm trying to figure out.

There was definitely a point in my thirties when I thought, 'Oh, wow, I'm not the youngest person on the set anymore.' But I like it. Working with younger artists is totally exciting.

What I learned from the Beastie Boys was to be independent. They set up their own world separate from the label. They built their own studio.

Even in this world where you're getting everything you need and having this nice life, there's still loneliness and longing and disconnection.

Maurice Sendak never - I remember he said something that was very striking because it's something I never thought about. I always loved his work, and he said, 'I don't really view myself as a children's book author. I just try and write about childhood as honestly as I can.'

The things that are really out of control, and scary, are emotions - of people around you, that are unpredictable, or those in yourself which are unpredictable.

I just want to make whatever is exciting.

I'm a little slow, so forgive me if I'm inarticulate.

I never knew how to do anything before I did it, really.

I'm hesitant to make grand statements because I feel like that it's not exactly what I'm writing about.

When you're close to somebody, you can never really know how they're experiencing the world.

Some of the best ideas come from sheer discovery, and not by some masterminded, preconceived genius.

I think because I'm not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood.

If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself.

If you compromise what you're trying to do just a little bit, you'll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you're suddenly really far away from where you're trying to go.