John Cassavetes Quotes

Ricardo Montalban is to improvisational acting what Mount Rushmore is to animation. ~ John Cassavetes

Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are ... In this country, people die at 21. They die emotionally at 21, maybe younger ... My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21 ... The films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution on how to save pain. ~ John Cassavetes

I have a one-track mind. That's all that I'm interested in - love. And the lack of it. When it stops. ~ John Cassavetes

I hate entertainment. ~ John Cassavetes

Most people don't know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, It's very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to ... As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad - to be willing to risk everything to really express it all. ~ John Cassavetes

My films are expressive of a culture that has had the possibility of attaining material fulfillment while at the same time finding itself unable to accomplish the simple business of conducting human lives. We have been sold a bill of goods as a substitute for life. What is needed is reassurance in human emotions; a re-evaluation of our emotional capacities. ~ John Cassavetes

I'm not good at comparing and contrasting. I take what's in front of me for what it is, although I guess there's something about Paul's realistic writing that is like Cassavetes. ~ John Cassavetes

I'd rather do 'She's So Lovely' that John Cassavetes wrote versus doing 'Batman.' ~ Robin Wright

The greatest location in the world is the human face. ~ John Cassavetes

John [Cassavetes] had shot a great deal of Shadows and I had to go fulfill my contract in California, so he and all the rest of the Shadows cast came out to California and they finished it off and he cut it. He turned the garage into an editing room and he was by then a director of Shadows. That's the only thing he'd directed. But, he loved it. ~ Gena Rowlands

It was more freedom than I think most people get when they're starting out - or even when they're not starting out. He [John Cassavetes] did his thing and I did whatever I thought. ~ Gena Rowlands

I like to act in films, I like to shoot 'em, I like to direct 'em, I like to be around 'em. I like the feel of it and it's something I respect. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a crappy film or a good film. Anyone who can make a film, I already love. But I feel sorry if they don't put any thought in it because then they missed the boat. ~ John Cassavetes

Of course I would change anything if John Cassavetes said so - it's his script. But he was very easy about that. ~ Gena Rowlands

People have said that my films are very difficult to watch, that they're experiences you are put through rather than ones you enjoy, and it's true. ~ John Cassavetes

I got a part opposite Edward G. Robinson in a play called Middle of The Night, which Paddy Cheyafsky had written. It played for a long time because everybody just loved Edward G. Robinson, everybody in New York wanted to see it. John [Cassavetes] and I were married at the time and put into a position where I was working very long evening hours and he was working in the daytime and so there was a lot of spare time. ~ Gena Rowlands

I have the confidence that I can take anybody and have them give a good performance, because I don't think there's anything to acting except expressing, being able to converse. So if I can just convince somebody not to clean themselves up, and not to be someone that they're not, and just be what they are in given circumstances, that's all that acting is to me, and I don't think it's very difficult. ~ John Cassavetes

As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. ~ John Cassavetes

Commercial movies have no feeling, no sensitivity. Most people tell me people won't understand films with feeling. But everyone can feel. ~ John Cassavetes

I'm a great believer in spontaneity because I think planning is the most destructive thing in the world. ~ John Cassavetes

I think I'm probably one of the worst directors around, but I do have an interest in my fellow man. ~ John Cassavetes

By the age of 50, I would like to know that I'm not dead - that there's some continuity to my life. ~ John Cassavetes

These days, everybody is supposed to be so intelligent: 'Isn't it terrible about Nixon getting elected?' 'Did you hear about the earthquake in Peru?' And you're supposed to have all the answers. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, like, 'What is bugging you, mister? Why can't you make it with your wife? Why do you lie awake all night staring at the ceiling? Why, why, why do you refuse to recognize you have problems and deal with them?'
The answer is that people have forgotten how to relate or respond. In this day of mass communications and instant communications, there is no communication between people. Instead it's long-winded stories or hostile bits, or laughter. But nobody's really laughing. It's more an hysterical, joyless kind of sound.
Translation: 'I am here and I don't know why. ~ John Cassavetes

My mother and father were never frightened of anything. They always felt that they should go through life happily and without fear, and they did that. And it was a great boon to my brother and myself. ~ John Cassavetes

The idea of love as a mysterious, undiscovered world has come to have no place in our innermost imagination. ~ John Cassavetes

(Acting) is an extension of life. How you're capable of performing in your life, that's how you're capable of performing on screen. ~ John Cassavetes

I won't make shorthand films, because I don't want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths. ~ John Cassavetes

[John Cassavetes] came backstage afterwards and introduced himself and we talked a bit, and then went for a little coffee at the Russian Tea Room next door. It just ... started. ~ Gena Rowlands

I was a big fan of John Cassavetes, his wife, Gena Rowlands, and that era of filmmaking which was about realism and which represented the antithesis of the dreamy escapism you found in musicals. ~ Carmen Ejogo

I've never seen an exploding helicopter. I've never seen anybody go and blow somebody's head off. So why should I make films about them? But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest way, I've seen people withdraw, I've seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope, behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I've myself done all these things. So I can understand them. What we are saying is so gentle. It's gentleness. We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems. ~ John Cassavetes

During the actual filming, I'm not really listening to dialogue. I'm watching to see if the actors are communicating something and expressing something. I'm just watching a conversation. You're not aware of exactly what people are saying. You are aware of what they are INTENDING and what kind of feeling is going on in that scene. ~ John Cassavetes

People who are making films today are too concerned with mechanics - technical things instead of feeling. ~ John Cassavetes

I would put my pictures up against anybody's in this world. Certainly in my own day I bow to no one. I don't think there's another director in the world who works harder to make better films than I do. ~ John Cassavetes

'Faces' became more than a film. It became a way of life, a film against the authorities and the powers that prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want to, something that can't be done in America, that can't be done without money. ~ John Cassavetes

You can fail in films because you don't have the talent, or you have too much humility, or you lack ferociousness. I'm a gangster. If I want something, I'll grab it. ~ John Cassavetes

I never understood a word John Cassavetes said. And I think he did that deliberately. ~ Peter Falk

Because John Cassavetes was so terrific in live TV, a lot of his friends had not been able to participate in that yet and so they asked if he would gather with them at night when I was at the play and tell them what live TV was like, what you had to adjust to because it was its own medium - it had many things you had to be aware of. ~ Gena Rowlands

We don't take the time to be vulnerable with each other ~ John Cassavetes

John [Cassavetes] loved actors. He gave them a lot of freedom. So if something came up that a certain actor just felt at the moment and said - that kind of improvisation he would accept. He gave very little direction. ~ Gena Rowlands

We only have two hours to change people's lives. ~ John Cassavetes

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive. ~ John Cassavetes

So many people mistakenly think that the rest of his [John Cassavetes] pictures and the ones we did were improvised, which isn't true. He wrote all the rest of them. ~ Gena Rowlands

My all-time favorites that I always go back to are films by the director John Cassavetes. The movies he made, the work he left behind, have been a big influence for my work. ~ Nina Hoss

John Cassavetes was there at night while I was working. After they [with his friends] discussed as much live TV as they felt they needed to, they started improvising scenes just for the fun of it and one of those scenes everybody got very interested in and it turned into Shadows [1959]. That movie was entirely improvised. ~ Gena Rowlands

John Cassavetes once gave me some advice that has proved invaluable... He said, 'We're good friends, but never, ever do an artistic favor for a friend. Loan friends money, be there for them in every other way, but don't do them any artistic favors, because you've got to have one area of your life where there's no room for compromise. ~ Sidney Poitier

I won't call my work entertainment. It's exploring. It's asking questions of people, constantly. 'How much do you feel? How much do you know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this?' A good movie will ask you questions you don't already know the answers to. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand? ~ John Cassavetes

I think I probably have the philosophy of a poor man. You know, like maybe I'd steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes. ~ John Cassavetes

John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday". ~ Gena Rowlands

To me there is a name for each person. I think it's marvelous to have a name. A woman is not a woman. It's either Gena or my mother or some other person. ~ John Cassavetes

I don't care about being on top, about being No. 1. I just make movies for a few suckers in the audience, anyway. ~ John Cassavetes

He[John Cassavetes] was just being an actor. A very successful actor, especially in live TV. He did many wonderful performances. ~ Gena Rowlands

Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Anyway, that was the last good day I had with Gus until the Last Good Day. ~ John Green

it depends whether the accommodation of social institutions to the altered state of human society, shall be the work of wise foresight, or of a conflict of opposite prejudices. The future of mankind will be gravely imperilled, if great questions are left to be fought over between ignorant change and ignorant opposition to change. ~ John Stuart Mill

For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity. ~ John Updike

Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,
I mean good-nature,
are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life. ~ John Dryden

In the bacteriology lab, we have culture plates. You put a bug in there and it starts growing and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And it grows until it finally fills the whole plate. And it crashes and dies. ~ John Tanton

Of course it's possible for political essays to be artful. I just want to call into question the dominance of content over form in the history of the essay. I want us to recognize that there's art involved in making this stuff, because we still don't approach the constructed nature of the essay with the same appreciation that we do poetry or fiction. ~ John D'Agata

And if you say a word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse. ~ John Malkovich

You can't stand for Jesus without a Christ-like spirit. ~ John Yates

A teacher in class is
like a man in the woods at night with a powerful flashlight in his hand.
Wherever he turns his light, the creatures on whom it shines are aware of it,
and do not behave as they do in the dark. Thus the mere fact of his watching
their behavior changes it into something very different. Shine where be will,
he can never know very much of the night life of the woods. ~ John Holt

Critics have never been able to discover a unifying theme in my films. For thatmatter, neither have I. ~ John Huston

In the increasingly convincing darkness
The words become palpable, like a fruit
That is too beautiful to eat. ~ John Ashbery

I'm not trying to be the triple threat guy. I'm still working on this one threat; acting. ~ John Krasinski

We may be able to prove conclusively that all men are born with potentially brilliant intellects ... and that the source of cultural creativity is the consciousness that springs from social cooperation and loving interaction ... the majority of us live far below our potential, because of the oppressive nature of most societies. ~ John Blacking

Knowledge about Him will not do. Work for Him will not do. We must have personal, vital fellowship with Him; otherwise, Christianity becomes a joyless burden. ~ John Piper

Jesus made this diagnosis a long time ago when talking about temptation. "The spirit" - notice the language again - "is willing, but the flesh [the body] is weak." This is very true and largely ignored and forgotten in our day. Habits eat willpower for breakfast. So there is the will, there is the mind, and there is the body. They are working badly, sometimes in ways that are kind of humorous to us, but often in ways that are horrible and unspeakably tragic. ~ John Ortberg

Where did this commandment come from in relation to polygamy? It also came from God ... When I see any of our people, men or women, opposing a principle of this kind ... I consider them apostates. ~ John Taylor

The photographic moment for Cartier-Bresson is an instant, a fraction of a second, and he stalks that instant as though it were a wild animal. The photographic moment for Strand is a biographical or historic moment, whose duration is ideally measured not by seconds but by its relation to a lifetime. Strand does not pursue an instant, but encourages a moment to arise as one might encourage a story to be told. ~ John Berger

Yoko [Ono] was showing me some of these Haiku in the original. The difference between them and Long fellow is immense. Instead of a long flowery poem the Haiku would say 'Yellow flower in white bowl on wooden table' which gives you the whole picture. ~ John Lennon

The greatest stumbling block for children in worship is that their parents do not cherish the hour. Children can feel the difference between duty and delight. Therefore, the first and most important job of a parent is to fall in love with the worship of God. You can't impart what you don't possess. ~ John Piper

I remember when John Lasseter called me back in the late 1990s to personally invite me to come be the voice of Barbie in 'Toy Story 2.' ~ Jodi Benson

Our planning system was dynamite when we first put it in. The thinking was fresh; the form mattered little. It was idea oriented. We then hired a head of planning, and he hired two vice presidents, and then he hired a planner; and the books got thicker, and the printing more sophisticated, and the covers got harder, and the drawings got better. ~ John Welch

I still believe Americas destiny is to become a living testament to what free human beings can accomplish by acting in unity. ~ John F. Kerry

With his trademark courage and conviction, President Reagan led us out of the Cold War, spreading his vision of freedom, resulting in the release of millions of people from the yoke of communism. ~ John Doolittle

Palin was a political Hail Mary, a long bomb in the closing minutes of a game that John McCain and Co. were certain to lose. They didn't care if she had the policy or political or emotional capacity to serve as vice president, let alone president. They were willing to drive the country off a cliff, if that's what it took to win. ~ Dee Dee Myers

them," he said. "The dust is warm," said Samuel. "Now it goes this way. 'And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." ~ John Steinbeck

Vermeer's woman reading a letter is as full of latent or subliminal kitsch as Tolstoy's War and Peace. ~ John Bayley

Prophecy and history predict and record a great and universal apostasy which was to be followed by a restoration as predicted by John in Revelation. The fact of the great apostasy is attested by both sacred and secular writ, and history bears witness that it became universal. We proclaim this fact of history not as an attack on any church. We do not assume any position of "holier than thou" or "wiser than thou," but we announce this historic fact of the apostasy as a vindication of the claim that there has been in fact a restoration of the gospel. ~ Hugh B. Brown

They now see with Heaven's eyes the schemes, traps, enticements, and entertainments of the world in a new way. So ~ John Bunyan

The only way to quieten me is to invite me to a tennis match. ~ John Forsythe

This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees - partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate's exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves. ~ John Hersey

Euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. ~ Pope John Paul II

The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be. ~ John Gierach

Purposeful action is thus the goal of all that is truly educative. ~ John Dewey

Prayer, perhaps more than any other activity, is the concrete expression of the fact that we are invited into a relationship with God. ~ John Ortberg Jr.