Jim Jarmusch Quotes

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

It is a sad and beautiful world. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

One of my favorites of all time was with Jim Jarmusch, called 'Dead Man.' I was in that with Johnny Depp. I ride really well, and I shoot a gun really well. I love the genre. Once I did Westerns, I was hooked. ~ Lance Henriksen

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

I am a big fan of Jim Jarmusch, and I do love big screen documentaries. ~ Martin Parr

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

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

In adolescence I started to find out about Robert Wilson because I saw Lou Reed's "Timerocker" at [the Brooklyn Academy of Music]. I started getting into Jim Jarmusch and knew that my uncle was a friend of his. I pieced together parts of his life in high school and college, which lead me to his story in a funny way. ~ Aaron Brookner

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

I'm an anxious person. What I like best is to smoke cigarettes and listen to music. A perfect day for me is a day with coffee, cigarettes, and music, to quote Jim Jarmusch. ~ Claire Denis

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

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

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) ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

There's this really amazing quote from Jim Jarmusch about celebrating your theft that I think has become more and more prominent in music: "It's not where you got it from, it's where you take it." To me, that's just an integral part of why I even bother making music. I don't mind that I've created an identity around what I do. ~ Alan Palomo

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

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 ] ~ Jim Jarmusch

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

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. ~ Jim Jarmusch

Gerald began - but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash - to pee. ~ Jim Gleeson

Bacon is like the opposite of medicine. It's like, "Take that, Lipitor." ~ Jim Gaffigan

We seem to have reached the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away. ~ Jim Broadbent

The closer a husband and wife get to God, the closer they get to each other. The farther away they get from God, the farther they get from each other. ~ Jim Bob Duggar

Comedic actors can be looked at as a lower form because we have to put ourselves in a lower place than most of the audience. I think lofty emotions are somehow considered more special. The best stories in the world to me are the ones that elicit a real emotion, but have humour. ~ Jim Carrey

I had a great first year and Mr. MacDonald was my biggest supporter. He gave me the encouragement I needed that first year to get my career started on a positive note. ~ Jim Evans

Al Plastino helped redefine Superman in the 1950s. His work on 'Superman's Girlfriend,' 'Lois Lane,' 'Adventure Comics' and pretty much any title in the Superman family will be fondly remembered for years to come. He will be missed. ~ Jim Lee

Why could nothing with Kate be simple? Why couldn't Jim ever just come by to tell me that he had bowled a perfect game or benched a personal best.
Maybe finally asked that weird tiger girl out. ~ Ilona Andrews

I really try not to read the tennis articles, because a lot of times they're guessing at how a player is feeling, and I like to keep myself kind of open minded about how I'm feeling, rather than have someone else explain to me what's going on. ~ Jim Courier

I can't point to anything that has been more responsible for my career than my training. ~ Jim Parrack

I don't hate you for loving you. I just hate my heart for choosing someone like you. ~ Jim Carrey

I think that business book reporting, it's all Jim Collins, it's the story of victory; it's success bias over and over again. ~ Ben Horowitz

If you want to get more, you have to BECOME MORE! ~ Jim Rohn

So I added in all the pains I'd learned. Cooking blunders I'd had to eat anyways. Equipment and property constantly breaking down, needing repairs and attention. Tax insanity, and rushing around trying to hack a path through a jungle of numbers. Late bills. Unpleasant jobs that gave you horribly aching feet. Odd looks from people who didn't know you, when something less than utterly normal happened. The occasional night when the loneliness ached so badly that it made you weep. The occasional gathering during with you wanted to escape to your empty apartment so badly that you were willing to go out of the bathroom window. Muscle pulls and aches you never had when you were younger, the annoyance as the price of gas kept going up to some ridiculous degree, the irritation with unruly neighbors, brainless media personalities, and various politicians who all seemed to fall on a spectrum somewhere between the extremes of "crook" and "moron."
You know.
Life. ~ Jim Butcher

They don't make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above the ground. I guess it's partly because it must be eisier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can't be all there is to it. Under the earth means a lot more than relative altitude. It's where dead things fit. Graves are under the earth. So are Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and a dozen other reported afterlives.
Maybe it says somthing about people. Maybe for us, under the earth is a subtle and profound statement. Maybe ground level provides us with a kind of symbolic boundary marker, an artificial construct that helps us remember that we are alive. Mabye it helps us push death's shadow back from our lives.
I live in a basement apartment and like it. What does that say about me?
Probably that I overanalyze things. ~ Jim Butcher

It is 12:23 in the morning, and people are coming to be here, coming to help. They saw what happened, and they can't stay in their houses. Not just Harry and Craig's friends. But their friends' parents, too. Jim from the tech crew has sped over with more lights from his basement. There have to be at least a dozen people. Then more than a dozen. Smita's mom is here. Two more police officers. And a man Harry's never seen before walks up and goes straight to Mr. Bellamy, saying, "I'm staying right here with you." They wear matching rings. ~ David Levithan

More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to the margins of mainstream society, banished to a political and social space not unlike Jim Crow, where discrimination in employment, housing, and access to education was perfectly legal, and where they could be denied the right to vote. ~ Michelle Alexander

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. ~ Jim Rohn

The apostles had this instinct: When in trouble, pray. When intimidated, pray. When challenged, pray. When persecuted, pray! ~ Jim Cymbala

One would expect that private property taken by eminent domain would become land available for public use such as parks and roads. Unfortunately, this decision creates a loophole for government to manipulate the definition of public use simply to generate greater tax revenue. ~ Jim Ryun

Wait. You work for me?"
"I prefer to think of it as managing your incompetence. ~ Jim Butcher

On nights like this, when there is anxiety about, there is a glut of lovemaking. Then the moon is our dance master. He has us move in unison. He has us trill and carol in each other's ears until the stars themselves have swollen and ripened to our cries. As ever here, we find our consolations sowing seed. ~ Jim Crace

Nixon was by nature a excluder. Halderman like to exclude people. When Nixon's need met Halderman's abilities, you had the most perfect formula for disaster. – Jim Shepley ~ David Pietrusza

Resolve says, 'I will.' The man says, 'I will climb this mountain. They told me it is too high, too far, too steep, too rocky, and too difficult. But it's my mountain. I will climb it. You will soon see me waving from the top or dead on the side from trying.' ~ Jim Rohn

Sometimes you read a script, and you just think, 'Wow, I would love to go and tell that story, and I don't even care what happens to the film, I would just love that experience.' And often, that mentality makes a great film. ~ Jim Sturgess

I tried to picture a female version of Jim and got Jim in a dress instead. The image was disturbing. ~ Ilona Andrews

But reducing harmful emissions, abating our dependence on foreign oil and developing alternative renewable energy sources have benefits that go beyond environmental health, they improve personal health, enhance national security and encourage our nation's economic viability. ~ Jim Clyburn

I like it when my five-year-old asks me if a woman in a burka on the subway is a ninja. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Everything I told him was technically true, more or less, and I got the job done," Jack said stubbornly. "Look, sir, if I were perfect, I wouldn't be working here in the first place. Now, would I?"
And then he hung up. On speakerphone. On a freaking archangel.
I couldn't help it. I let out a rolling belly laugh. "I just got suckered into doing this by ... Stars and stones, you didn't even know that he ... Big bad angel boy, and you get the wool pulled over your eyes by ... " I stopped trying to talk and just laughed.
Uriel eyed the phone, then me, and then tucked the little device away again, clearly nonplussed. "It doesn't matter how well I believe I know your kind, Harry. They always manage to find some way to try my patience. ~ Jim Butcher

I'm one of those people who think that stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then they're over, and then you tell the next story. ~ Jim Butcher