“What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.”

There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work.

One of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film.

It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.

If you want to be a great director, be a great screenwriter.

I am not a special person, I am not especially strong; I am not especially gifted.

I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’

During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set.

I have no idea who the characters are, later, their personalities take over anything I might want to do.

Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working.

For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.

If I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take ‘myself,’ subtract ‘movies,’ and the result is ‘zero.’

I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with.

When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film.

My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something.

For every young person living on the streets tonight, there are many at home zoning out inside their homes through video games, and even more who disengage from school.

With ‘New Rose Hotel,’ I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that’s all I was going to get.

Unreasonable haste is the direct road to error.

I direct, and I make movies I can’t finance. I can’t raise money. I can’t sell anything. I make things.

The supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms

My job is going to be to direct the film – I’m going to do it. And that’s where my job ends.

No one can stop me from talking about my movie.

My existence is about making movies, so I’ve just got to rock and roll with the punches.