The secret to film is that it’s an illusion.

I don’t watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched ‚The King’s Speech‘ on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

One of the great pleasures of going to see a Daniel Day-Lewis film: you haven’t seen him in five years. Where have you been? So, it’s a special event, right? Well, if you want to go see a movie that I’m in, it still may be a special event for you, but, you don’t feel like you don’t know where I’ve been.

I’m not a film buff. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

Everybody accuses me of moving fast when I direct a picture. I don’t move fast, but I just keep moving.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Where I think the most work needs to be done is behind the camera, not in front of it.

You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it’s not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.

My favorite movies of all times is ‚Doctor Zhivago,‘ and I love ‚Gone With the Wind.‘ I’d love to play some Southern belle or something where I owned a plantation.

The only film I’ve enjoyed starring a wrestler was Mickey Rourke in ‚The Wrestler.‘

One good thing about acting in film is that it’s good therapy.

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

I love good film, whether it’s an independent or studio film. The independent films, I think the good ones aren’t necessarily eccentric ones but they’re the more specific ones.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

I’m always secretly the most pleased when a show just really, really looks good and when my camera guys are really happy with the images they got.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

I saw ‚Magic Mike,‘ and I thought it was great.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

None of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside. Mad is interested in editing. Pax loves music and deejaying.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Music is like film to me.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Yes, I’m always – I’m always surprised when you make a film and you live with it a while and you put it out, you never dream that anybody is ever going to want to really see it.

You just don’t know when you get in the editing room what you will need as a link or a tool for a transition. If you’re in a room, and there’s a kettle boiling, get a shot of it. Don’t worry if people think you’re nuts.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

The environment that we call society is created by past generations; we accept it, as it helps us to maintain our greed, possessiveness, illusion.

In 3-D filmmaking, I can take images and manipulate them infinitely, as opposed to taking still photographs and laying them one after the other. I move things in all directions. It’s such a liberating experience.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

I do have tatoos, and I do wear leather, but there are other sides of me, that my film express.

My folks always let me go to the movies every Saturday. We were really motion-picture goers.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the ’60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can’t even comprehend it. It’s such an illusion, it’s such a strange thing.

I’ve always wanted to do a family movie.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

I’m not Russell Crowe. I’m not going to do a period piece.

I have kind of a funny relationship with movies. I don’t have to see the whole movie to get an impression of it or to let it have an influence on me.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

Tradition is the illusion of permanence.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

Everything I learned I learned from the movies.

If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the Western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is.

The skin of my character in ‚The Man Who Fell to Earth‘ was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking.

In those days, the early 1980s, TV and film were interchangeable.

I am a fan of the ‚Rocky‘ films, and ‚Rocky 4‘ is my favourite. I also like ‚The Warriors.‘

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.