Cinema Quotes

I prefer watching people on a screen, and I've had the most pleasurable people-watching experiences at the Palace Cinema in Balwyn. ~ Morris Gleitzman

Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

The angel said, I like black-and-white films more than color because they're more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It's sort of like prayer. ~ Jonathan Carroll

Parallel cinema has not made an effort to communicate in a language the other person understands. ~ Om Puri

I never sit in a cinema and go, "Ah! I want to be in that film!" ~ Carey Mulligan

I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory. ~ Peter Greenaway

I am grateful to theatre for making me what I am today. But it's not like theatre is my first love. I am equally attached to cinema, which is, actually, a child of theatre, since it borrows heavily from it. ~ Om Puri

For me, as a film goer, I like nothing more than to sit in the cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I'm about to see or unfold on-screen. Every time we go to make a film, we do everything we can to try to systematise things so we're able to make the film in private, so that when it's finished it's up to the audience to make of it what they will. ~ Christopher Nolan

I like cinema. I am very fond of it. But from time to time I feel like having some time on my own. ~ Patrice Leconte

I like action films, not exclusively, but I like Samurai films. I like Westerns. Not so much war pictures, but a few. I like kinetic cinema. ~ Alexander Payne

We don't experience things collectively or cathartically anymore. Viewing has become an intensely private, fetishistic, compulsive process that happens separately from others, and that reflects not only our relation to cinema as a space of possibility, belief, and imagination. But more generally, of what could be, of readiness, which is what the movies have historically been about - the ability to act on things and change. ~ Masha Tupitsyn

A myth is a fantasy, a preferred lie, a foundational story, a hypnotic trance, an identity game, a virtual reality, one that can be either inspirational or despairing. It is a story in which I cast myself; it is my inner cinema, the motion picture of my inner reality - one that moves all the time. No diagnosis can fix the myth, no cure can settle it, because our inner life is precisely what, in us, will not lie still. ~ Ginette Paris

Do we recognize the platform that Indian cinema has been given? Of course. And typically India of us, we gracefully acknowledge our host's grace and we thank you for celebrating us and our cinema. ~ Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

To get noticed, I had to take my films in a space which was much more democratic in terms of cinema - the international film festivals. ~ Anurag Kashyap

The difference was principally in the invisible places toward which their respective hearts were turned. They dreamed of Cairo with its autonomous government, its army, its newspapers and its cinema, while he, facing in the same direction, dreamed just a little beyond Cairo, across the Bhar El Hamar to Mecca. They thought in terms of grievances, censorship, petitions and reforms; he, like any good Moslem who knows only the tenets of his religion, in terms of destiny and divine justice. If the word 'independence' was uttered, they saw platoons of Moslem soldiers marching through streets were all the signs were written in Arabic script, they saw factories and power plants rising from the fields; he saw skies of flame, the wings of avenging angels, and total destruction. ~ Paul Bowles

I go to the theater two or three times a week when I'm in London. Whereas I feel guilty going to the cinema in the middle of the afternoon. ~ Eddie Redmayne

If California is a state of mind, Hollywood is where you take its temperature. There is a peculiar sense in which this city existing mainly on film and tape is our national capital, alas, and not just the capital of California. It's the place where our children learn how and what to dream and where everything happens just before, or just after, it happens to us. ~ Ross Macdonald

When I was young I used to sit in the cinema thinking wouldn't it be great if you could have a film in which the characters were like real people instead of being like actors. ~ Mike Leigh

Looking at a first assembly is kind of like looking at an overgrown garden. You can't just wade in with a weed whacker; you don't yet know where the stems of the flowers are. ~ Walter Murch

Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest. ~ Jean Douchet

Everyone is looking for a purpose in life. The reason we all go to the cinema or online is because we haven't found a purpose yet. We are always wondering why we're here. But I've learned that we have to create that purpose for ourselves. ~ Jerome Jarre

Some holiday traditions are sacred. In our house one such tradition is the annual Christmas classic cinema celebration. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

I think that I prefer to shoot characters even if they are not good people. I don't think that cinema is a place where you can do sentences like in a court. ~ Miguel Gomes

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. ~ Jean-Luc Godard

I really have problems with horror movies. I don't watch them. It's a feeling I don't want to have in cinema. I'm too reactive. It's too draining to watch that kind of movie. ~ Ludivine Sagnier

I've really only had one (dream) since I got into this business at 13 years old, which was to be in this business forever. Once I did my first television commercial, I caught that itch and that bug. I want to be a part of pieces of art - as far as cinema is concerned - that people will want to see for generations to come. That's my dream. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

In the theater there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time - in the cinema, only one. ~ Orson Welles

I've worked with a lot great directors who have huge resumes, but I'm really trying to be active in my career in supporting the new generation of cinema. I like taking some time to try to support and be a part of that. ~ Michael Pitt

I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl. ~ D.W. Griffith

Coming out of the '60s and the Vietnam War in America, it was commonplace for people to make films that had relevance to them. And since the '70s, cinema has gone almost entirely in the direction of spectacle and escapism and superhero films. ~ Dan Gilroy

I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images. ~ Georges Duhamel

I don't drink in the cinema because I have a bladder the size of a hummingbird. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer

Even in Indian cinema, there is so much work that I have accepted because I'm comfortable and so much I have declined because I haven't been comfortable. ~ Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out ~ Martin Scorsese

Cinema has opened a world of possibilities up for me. ~ Antonio Banderas

There is no border in my films. You can see yourself in these stories. This is the greatest thing about the power of cinema. It's very present. It's all there. You can't escape it. ~ Lav Diaz

People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it's a gay film ... I think that's really simplistic. Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or counter-sexual activity to that, then what kind of a structure would it be? ~ Todd Haynes

Everyone has their truth. Mine lies in the cinema. ~ Dawn Garcia

If you are a fan, you have two choices. Go to the stadium, where you see the whole beauty of it. Or stay at home, watch the beautiful moves on the slo-mo cameras. Don't go to the cinema, because you won't see it there. ~ Carlos Cuaron

In Majorca, I can be myself. I go to the supermarket and the cinema, and I am just Rafa. Everyone knows me, and it is no big deal. I can go all day - no photographs. ~ Rafael Nadal

I'm of course disillusioned with what has happened to World cinema. Now cinemas in both Eastern and Western Europe are filled with the same blockbusters from Hollywood. ~ Alexander Walker

They were ghosts, I suppose, the procession of the dead. They weren't pale kings and pale maidens, they were work-worn men and women - perfectly ordinary people, except for being dead. You'd never mistake them for living people. You couldn't quite see through them, but they were even more drained of colour than everything else, and they weren't quite as solid as they ought to be. One of the men I recognised. He had been sitting in Fedw Hir near Grampar making blubbing sounds with his mouth. Now he strode along easily with a spring in his step. His face was grave and composed, he was a man with dignity and purpose. He bent and picked up one of my oak leaves from the path and offered it like a ticket at the cinema as he passed between the two trees. I didn't see anyone take it. I couldn't see into the darkness at all. ~ Jo Walton

I definitely felt that I was put at a very high place to be able to be a part of such a wonderful franchise in cinema history, so I was definitely very driven at doing a great job and having my body look the way it should and just being a part of the creative process. ~ Kristanna Loken

The cinema is there to heighten the imagination; I have always tried to make sure it does so. ~ Ken Adam

I'm an international actor, but at the same time, I'm also a Bollywood actor, even though most of my career has been abroad. However, I've always kept in touch with Hindi cinema. ~ Kabir Bedi

My grandmother would take me to the cinema quite a lot. She'd take me with her and sometimes she'd sneak my sister in, and then we'd sometimes just sit and watch the movie again. ~ James McAvoy

I love escaping into film, because everyday life I find quite troublesome. So any excuse to go into a cinema and say goodbye to the world for a couple of hours, or in a book or whatever, is great. ~ Alison Goldfrapp

If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think. ~ Ben Wheatley

My films are doing well in Polish cinemas, so I don't really have problems financing them, and my international accolades are helpful. ~ Malgorzata Szumowska

If you're not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you're wasting a great potential of cinema. ~ Alexander Payne

Cinema as a means of expression fascinates me. ~ Orson Welles

It may be that we exist and cease to exist in alternations, like the minute dots in some forms of toned printing or the succession of pictures on a cinema film. It may be that reality is an illusion of movement in an eternal, static, multidimensional universe. We may be only a story written on the ground of the inconceivable; the pattern on a rug beneath the feet of the incomprehensible. ~ H.G.Wells

Cinema is an art form. ~ Anurag Kashyap

I think there's a fear of difference in American cinema. ~ Ira Sachs

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema. ~ Francois Truffaut

I have always been clear that cinema is not my priority and that my family is. ~ Malaika Arora Khan

You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema. ~ Peter Morgan

I prefer working in good cinema, wherever it is. I like subjects that have a universal appeal. ~ Om Puri

The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course. ~ A.A. Milne

Unfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

The films that I go to see at the cinema are not Hollywood blockbusters particularly. I've not got anything against them ... I'm in them! But I don't go and spend my money on them. ~ Gemma Arterton

It's a way of living, cinema. And I see my family, I do this and that, I travel. It's a long process to let it happen. ~ Agnes Varda

The Beatles were bubblegum cards and Help at the Saturday morning cinema and toy plastic guitars and singing 'Yellow Submarine' at the top of my voice in the back row of the coach on school trips. They belong to me, not to me and Laura, or me and Charlie, or me and Alison Ashworth, and though they'll make me feel something, they won't make me feel anything bad. ~ Nick Hornby

It was time for me to go that Thursday night. We'd just watched Citizen Kane--a throwback to my Cinema 190 class at USC--and it was late. And though a soft, cozy bed in one of the guest rooms sounded much more appealing than driving all the way home, I'd never really wanted to get into the habit of sleeping over at Marlboro Man's house. It was the Pretend-I'm-a-Proper-Country-Club-Girl in me, mixed with a healthy dose of fear that Marlboro Man's mother or grandmother would drop by early in the morning to bring Marlboro Man some warm muffins or some such thing and see my car parked in the driveway. Or even worse, come inside the house, and then I'd have to wrestle with whether or not to volunteer that "I slept in a guest room! I slept in a guest room!", which only would have made me look more guilty. Who needs that? I'd told myself, and vowed never to put myself in that predicament. ~ Ree Drummond

The Last Of England works with image and sound, a language which is nearer to poetry than prose. It tells its story quite happily in silent images, in contrast to a word-bound cinema ... ~ Derek Jarman

In the year 2024 the most important single thing which the cinema will have helped in a large way to accomplish will be that of eliminating from the face of the civilised world all armed conflict. Pictures will be the most powerful factor in bringing about this condition. With the use of the universal language of moving pictures the true meaning of the brotherhood of man will have been established throughout the earth. ~ D.W. Griffith

[ ... ] at any rate there is nothing in the world more dreary, damping, and obscurely perturbing than to come out of a cinema in the afternoon to a noisy world. ~ Patrick Hamilton

During the course of a day, some dark feeling comes, maybe some sadness comes, some thrill, some great happiness, some strange humor. Cinema can embrace all that in one story, just as the story of life. ~ David Lynch

I want a film which really hurts your eyes. ~ Isidore Isou

I think starting a cinema career late in life has more advantages than disadvantages. ~ Luke Evans

I turn a lot of stuff down - big, big movies, the kind I wouldn't want to go to the cinema to see. ~ Matthew Fox

Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire. ~ Slavoj Zizek

I let things happen because I never make a film that people ask me to do or bring me a package with a good book and two actors and all that. I think cinema should be made by coming from nowhere to becoming a film. This I believe in. ~ Agnes Varda

I never go to the cinema. I can't stand sitting in the dark with strangers
all of us obliged to share the same emotional experiences
it's too intimate. I like to be emotional in private. ~ Peter Greenaway

I wanted to direct when I was very young. I had no idea of cinema, of who's doing what. That was my first instinct: "Okay, I want to be the boss." ~ Thomas Bidegain

I like it when somebody tells me a story, and I actually really feel that that's becoming like a lost art in American cinema. ~ Quentin Tarantino

Here was opportunity to make an audience walk and move, be sociable in a way never dreamed of by the rigors of cinema-watching, in circumstances where many different perspectives could be brought to bear on a series of phenomena associated with the topics under consideration. Yet all the time it was a subjective creation under the auspices of light and sound, dealing with a large slice of cinema's vocabulary. ~ Peter Greenaway

I really wanted to take the viewer to the 'here and now' regarding the exterminations, and communicate directly in a visceral way. The art of cinema can communicate that way, and that's why I wanted to do it that way. ~ Laszlo Nemes

My parents were huge fans of westerns, European cinema, and horror in particular. They wouldn't just show me kids' films. ~ Hideo Kojima

When people say I have become a celebrity, I remind them of fame's flip side. For instance, if I want to watch a movie in a cinema, I have to enter through a side exit just before the film begins and leave by the same exit before the credits roll. ~ Saina Nehwal

Do you know anything about silent films?"
"Sure," I said. "The first ones were developed in the late nineteenth century and sometimes had live musical accompaniment, though it wasn't until the 1920s that sound became truly incorporated into films, eventually making silent ones obsolete in cinema. ~ Richelle Mead

Oh my God! You have Empire Records?" I grab the DVD and rush over to put it in the player. "You know this movie is cinema gold," Jackson says as he brings over popcorn and settles into the couch. "This is the best movie ever!" I exclaim and snuggle into his side. "Okay. Before we start watching, if you could be anyone, who would you pick? I'd be Lucas. He's hysterical." I smile and grab the bowl, putting it on my lap. "I guess Joe. He's the boss." I laugh at his choice. Of course he'd pick the one who's in charge. Joe is pretty badass, though. "I think you'd be a great Rex. Oh Rexy, you're so sexy." I smirk and push play as he scoffs. ~ Corinne Michaels

Cinema is a visual language, and you're always looking for visual metaphors for things. You know, if I was writing a play about Howard Hughes, I could have him give a monologue about how he's terrified to touch a doorknob. But on screen, you know, working with Marty Scorsese in 'The Aviator,' that became the series of images that told a story. ~ John Logan

Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It's what you do with the medium. ~ John Lasseter

If people go to IMDB, they will see that I'm very comfortable with independent cinema, and doing studio films too. For me this is not an either/or situation. ~ Spike Lee

I can't watch 'Titanic' without breaking down within the first 10 minutes. You know, when it got re-released in 3D, I went to see it again. My mom came to pick me up from the cinema, and I was just bawling my eyes out. ~ Sophie Turner

My career in the movie business began in Hong Kong, my heart has always been tied to Asia, and it is immensely gratifying to see international recognition for Asian cinema as a whole. ~ Michelle Yeoh

I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room. ~ Mira Nair

I think that distributors and marketing companies realise that there are a huge number of women over 40 who want to go the cinema and see films about themselves. Women of my age don't want to be force-fed with stuff about 25-year-olds. ~ Lesley Manville

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams. ~ Manuel Puig

The chief attraction of the opposite sex for all of us, old and young, men and women: we need someone to save us from the sympathetic smiles in the Sunday-night cinema queue, someone who can stop us from falling down into the pit where the permanently single live with their mums and dads. ~ Nick Hornby

We need to see ourselves projected in other members of our species to, in turn, understand ourselves. Cinema, is that mirror. It is a bridge between the others and us. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I love entering the bowels of the cinema and immersing myself in another world. ~ Alison Goldfrapp

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide. ~ Keanu Reeves

At its best, SF cinema is an allegorical site that invites the audience to safely examine and reflect on long-standing social issues in an unfamiliar setting, providing the possibility of viewing them in a new light. At its worst, the process of allegorical displacement invites audiences to affirm racist ideas, confirm racial fears, and reinforce dubious generalizations about race and the place of African Americans in U.S. society without employing overt racial language or explicit imagery. ~ Adilifu Nama

Cinema is a reflection of reality.
But you will feel things that you want to Existentially. ~ Pradeesh

Americans think cinema is about storytelling; I don't believe that. I think it's a language and everyone has to find their own way of speaking. It's not so much what you say as the way you say it. ~ Marjane Satrapi

I prefer ordinary girls - you know, college students, waitresses, that sort of thing. Most of the girls I go out with are just good friends. Just because I go out to the cinema with a girl, it doesn't mean we are dating. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

If an irreducible distinction between theatre and cinema does exist, it may be this: Theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space. Cinemahas access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space. ~ Susan Sontag

In narrative cinema, a certain terminology has already been established: 'film noir,' 'Western,' even 'Spaghetti Western.' When we say 'film noir' we know what we are talking about. But in non-narrative cinema, we are a little bit lost. So sometimes, the only way to make us understand what we are talking about is to use the term 'avant-garde.' ~ Jonas Mekas