Jaco Van Dormael Quotes

#1. If you're not compulsively a monomaniac, you'll never make a film. It's like taking the same chewing gum, every morning, and saying, "Okay, it has a lot of taste," and continuing to chew it.

Jaco Van Dormael

#2. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid I haven't been alive enough. It should be written on every school room blackboard: Life is a playground - or nothing.

Jaco Van Dormael

#3. You can not go back. That's why it's hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long, as you don't choose, everything remains possible.

Jaco Van Dormael

#4. A film is like a message dropped in a bottle in the sea that somebody finds. Every time somebody finds it, it's a miracle. But, I don't know what the perception will be. I can know what I tried to do, but I never know what the perception is.

Jaco Van Dormael

#5. An actor can play two or three lines where he says one thing, but plays the opposite. That's the most important moving part of a film.

Jaco Van Dormael

#6. When I write, I speak with ghosts for years, and I see images that are a little bit out of focus. I see faces, but the faces change. At the moment that it's a real human being that's flesh and bone, it changes a character. It's much more precise and complex.

Jaco Van Dormael

#7. There is a big difference between storytelling and being alive. Those are the two things that I prefer in life - telling stories and being alive.

Jaco Van Dormael

#8. When I fall in love, I don't know why I fall in love, I just know that I am in love.

Jaco Van Dormael

#9. Having a big budget, I have no problem with spending the movie. It's fantastic to have a big budget. It gives a lot of time. It gives a lot of freedom. What's difficult is raising the money beforehand, and then when the investor wants the money back, afterwards.

Jaco Van Dormael