John Huston Quotes

#1. Once you have found the right shot to introduce the scene-written your first declarative sentence-then the rest flows. You've found the key to the whole scene.

John Huston

#2. I am more lost in wonder than ever.

John Huston

#3. It's not color, it's like pouring 40 tablespoons of sugar water over a roast.

John Huston

#4. I don't try to guess what a million people will like. It's hard enough to know what I like.

John Huston

#5. I don't approve of censorship. I like the French theatre idea. Put on the play, and if the audience doesn't care for it, or feels offended by it, they rip up the seats.

John Huston

#6. I relieve myself from the rigours of directing by casting the movie correctly.

John Huston

#7. Hollywood has always been a cage ... a cage to catch our dreams.

John Huston

#8. A work of art doesn't dare you to realize it. It germinates and gestates by itself.

John Huston

#9. You're good, you're real good.

John Huston

#10. You walk through a series of arches, so to speak, and then, presently, at the end of a corridor, a door opens and you see backward through time, and you feel the flow of time, and realize you are only part of a great nameless procession.

John Huston

#11. Whenever something is convenient or was modified after 1970, you probably shouldn't use it as root.

John Huston

#12. The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.

John Huston

#13. There's never any telling what you'll say or do next, except that it's bound to be something astonishing. By God, sir, you are a character.

John Huston

#14. Even Michelangelo on his deathbed thought he'd done nothing to ennoble art. He wanted to destroy his work-the Pieta! And this from the greatest artist who ever lived. Of course I am not comparing my work to Michelangelo's. But this eternal dissatisfaction of the artist is what I was talking about.

John Huston

#15. I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk.

John Huston

#16. For sheer strength of character, I wouldn't have dared to cross swords with Callas. I would rather have gone six rounds with Jack Dempsey.

John Huston

#17. Critics have never been able to discover a unifying theme in my films. For thatmatter, neither have I.

John Huston

#18. Marilyn was one step from oblivion when I directed her in The Asphalt Jungle. I remember she impressed me more off the screen than on ... there was something touching and appealing about her.

John Huston

#19. What you try to become is a bringer of magic, for magic and the truth are closely allied and movies are sheer magic ... when they work, it's, well, it's glorious.

John Huston

#20. Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place they're capable of anything.

John Huston

#21. I don't got to show you no stinkin' bahdges!

John Huston

#22. After all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.

John Huston

#23. What to do when inspiration doesn't come; be careful not to spook, get the wind up, force things into position. You must wait around until the idea comes.

John Huston

#24. I would spend more time with my children. I would make my money before spending it. I would learn the joys of wine instead of hard liquor. I would not smoke cigarettes when I had pneumonia. I would not marry a fifth time.

John Huston

#25. When you make motion pictures, each picture is a life unto itself. When you finish and the picture is over, there's an understanding, a realization that we'll never be assembled this way again. That these relationships are severed forever and ever. And each of these films is a little life.

John Huston