Costa Gavras Quotes

#1. A lot of films made me love the movies, everything from Hitchcock to Godard. But the ones that really grabbed me were Costa-Gavras's films like 'Z' and 'State of Siege.'

Paul Haggis

#2. How strange are the tricks of memory, which, often hazy as a dream about the most important events of a man's life, religiously preserve the merest trifles.

Richard Burton

#3. People say "the Americans" or "the United States," as if it was a kind of bloc. It's not. There's a lot of people thinking differently from other people in the U.S. This is very interesting to me and very important.

Costa-Gavras

#4. This crisis started probably due to the freedom they gave to the banks. First President [Ronald] Reagan and then President [Bill] Clinton. So, for [Barack] Obama it is extremely difficult to change now, to find a way to organize this banking system [differently].

Costa-Gavras

#5. Many years ago making movies was something. It was the major entertainment just to go to the cinema, once, twice a week. At the time, something like 400 million people went to the movies.

Costa-Gavras

#6. All ends are temporary and all life is born from death.

Christopher Pike

#7. Mr. Graves was always using the word weirdo to describe himself and people he liked. He said that all the great writers were "weirdos," too - that our best artists, musicians, and thinkers were first labeled weird in high school or "when they were young." That was "the price of admission.

Matthew Quick

#8. It was never meant to be permanent. You must have known the tide would come back in.

Anne Lamott

#9. [Akiro] Kurosawa, no doubt, was a big influence. Movies sometimes more than directors have influenced me: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Ford, was an extraordinary discovery. Sergei Eisenstein, of course. Later on, [Ingmar] Bergman.

Costa-Gavras

#10. Sometimes there are leftwing governments I'm very critical of. For me, being leftwing is to live in a society where there's permanent change. It also means to respect the freedom of everybody, and to not accept big organizations or rich, powerful people holding power.

Costa-Gavras

#11. With one eye on today's blessings you will have more staying power for the distant goal.

Henry B. Eyring

#12. Every morning you have the economic news from all over the world, from television, radio, the Internet, and an hour later the news changes and the numbers change. People run fast from one place to another, which is very risky because they don't have enough time to think.

Costa-Gavras

#13. I don't want to be the passively alert vegetable in the corner that takes in everything but can't communicate, which I think would suck a lot of life out of my family without giving very much to me.

Tony Judt

#14. We saw what happens with Bolsheviks. It was another catastrophe. I don't have the solution. The moviemaker can ask questions but not give solutions.

Costa-Gavras

#15. A lot of my friends are gay, and certainly I have no tolerance for anyone who has any sort of ignorance or restriction on people's lives or love lives.

Sasha Roiz

#16. We don't live in Disneyland. We live in blood and in time, not in Fantasyland. We live in a tragic world.

Costa-Gavras

#17. In the U.S. more than any other place, the banking system is insane. Millions of Americans lost their houses. Because of what? Because of the banking system. This American banking system is also coming to Europe. We can say today that the banks and high financiers run the world.

Costa-Gavras

#18. The American influence is not so aggressive anymore. The American big business influence in Latin America is not as strong, so people can vote and they can have a different life than before. They can have more liberal, more interesting, and more democratic governments.

Costa-Gavras

#19. Essentially, filmmakers have to be free and not directed by power or politicians.

Costa-Gavras

#20. I initially studied literature [in France], and then I went to cinema school. I discovered the Cinematheque, and saw not only action movies and westerns, but also lots of serious movies.

Costa-Gavras

#21. You know every time you change a decade, it's a problem, because you approach the end little by little. But my decision is to keep going. The problem is always to know when the head doesn't work well. Someone has to tell you. I hope my children will tell me.

Costa-Gavras

#22. In a recent interview, Howard Dean admitted that he used to drink and smoke pot. So, now all he needs to put him over the top is a sex scandal.

David Letterman

#23. I decided to go to the cinema school because I thought it was a new sort of media. Nowadays, it's not anymore, but in the '50s, cinema had a half century of age. Today it's more than one century. I thought it was a new media, a new way of telling stories.

Costa-Gavras

#24. It is unhealthy to marinate in your own press clippings.

Sam Walton

#25. Aggressive capitalism leads the world, and we can see the results, especially in Europe: more poverty for the vast majority, and more riches for a few.

Costa-Gavras

#26. I saw money becoming more and more important everywhere. It's one of the most abstract and important inventions by human beings. At the same time, money is capable of extraordinary corruption in every kind of relationship. I tried to see how and why, more and more, money is becoming a religion.

Costa-Gavras

#27. Technology is an extension of our hands and our feet, not our spirit.

Costa-Gavras

#28. In the U.S., some extraordinary movies have been made on politics and social issues. We learned lots of things from American cinema. But in the last ten or fifteen years, this has changed drastically. Today, that kind of movie is much easier to make in Europe.

Costa-Gavras