Tom McCarthy Quotes

#1. I loved acting, and then acting led to writing, and writing led to directing, and directing lead to five movies, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.

Tom McCarthy

#2. All great enterprises are about logistics. Not genius or inspiration or flights of imagination, skill or cunning, but logistics.

Tom McCarthy

#3. It's very fluid, this space between philosophy and literature, and that's something that resonates for me.

Tom McCarthy

#4. It's about the possibility, or otherwise, of meaning in the world. And the possibility, or otherwise, of writing. And the possibility, or otherwise, of the resolution of everything into some coherent, cogent vision.

Tom McCarthy

#5. Everything becomes buffering, and buffering becomes everything.

Tom McCarthy

#6. Guns aren't just history's props and agents: they're history itself, spinning alternate futures in their chamber, hurling the present from their barrel, casting aside the empty shells of past

Tom McCarthy

#7. For anthropologists, even the exotic's not exotic, let alone the everyday.

Tom McCarthy

#8. Forget family, or ethnic and religious groupings: corporations have supplanted all these as the primary structure of the modern tribe.

Tom McCarthy

#9. You all want to be the hero in the film who runs away in slo-mo from the villain's factory that he's just mined, throwing himself to the ground as it explodes. But the explosion's taking place already - it's always been taking place. You just didn't notice ...

Tom McCarthy

#10. People need foundation myths.

Tom McCarthy

#11. Some people shy around 'The Cobbler.' 'The Cobbler' will always be a very special film to me. I've had a lot of wonderful response from 'The Cobbler.'

Tom McCarthy

#12. If people were to tell other people everything about themselves, we'd live in a dull world.

Tom McCarthy

#13. [ ... ]to be real
to become fluent, natural, to cut out the detour that sweeps us around what's fundamental to events, preventing us from touching their core: the detour that makes us all second-hand and second-rate.

Tom McCarthy

#14. I'm a pretty well-read person. I read my paper every morning.

Tom McCarthy

#15. Ultimately, as an actor, it comes down to committing to the text in the script.

Tom McCarthy

#16. We're the noblest savages of all.

Tom McCarthy

#17. With docs, there's often a very direct communication between the filmmaker and the audience. With narrative movies, we leave it a little bit more open.

Tom McCarthy

#18. I just try to keep going and work on projects that are exciting to me, with people I respect and enjoy and want to work with. That takes me in different directions sometimes, but it's all been a pretty good ride.

Tom McCarthy

#19. There's a bit more of a safe distance when you're making a narrative movie, a bit more perspective. Audiences can separate themselves from the harsh reality of the facts a little bit more and think: 'Okay, how do I consider this?'

Tom McCarthy

#20. Satin Island, like all books, contains hundreds of borrowings, echoes, remixes and straight repetitions. To list them all would take up as much space as the text itself. The critical reader can entertain him- or herself tracking some of them down, if he or she is that way inclined.

Tom McCarthy

#21. I think when you're dealing with faith, you want to be as responsible and sensitive to the material as you can.

Tom McCarthy

#22. Whenever you're telling a story about true-life events and about real people, there's a tremendous responsibility-slash-burden to get it right.

Tom McCarthy

#23. It was such a joy to be an actor on 'The Wire.'

Tom McCarthy

#24. A lot of times, I'll resist the temptation to visually define a movie until, one, I really understand just what the movie's about, and two, until I start talking to my cinematographer.

Tom McCarthy

#25. The passion and knowledge of journalism as storytelling is incredibly infectious.

Tom McCarthy