Ernst Lubitsch Quotes

#1. My roommate at Yale University introduced me to the auteur theory of filmmaking. I soon became a big fan of the works of John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, and Stan Brakhage. I then decided to make my own films!

Lloyd Kaufman

#2. On Ernst Lubitsch: He could do more with a closed door than other directors could do with an open fly.

Billy Wilder

#3. It's not smart to hold yourself away from the shocks of life, the good ones or the bad. They're all part of the mix, and paradoxically, shying away from them only makes things harder.

Linda Lael Miller

#4. I let the audience use their imaginations. Can I help it if they misconstrue my suggestions?

Ernst Lubitsch

#5. I've been to Paris France and I've been to Paris Paramount. Paris Paramount is better.

Ernst Lubitsch

#6. Voices urging her to try, to reach into herself, to draw out the power. Voices that could turn hard and cold at the slight provocation. Voices that wheedled and threatened and lied.

Cassandra Clare

#7. I think we're really - we're doing a really great job doing our show, and other shows are doing a great job doing theirs, and we'll just see what people have to say.

Michael C. Hall

#8. As children we listened to the sound of the sea still echoing in the shell we picked up by the shore. That ancestral roar links us to the great sea which surges within us as well.

James Hollis

#9. Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else; and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it.

Walter Savage Landor

#10. To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.

Anton Chekhov

#11. In Hollywood we acquire the finest novels in order to smell the leather bindings.

Ernst Lubitsch

#12. Brass shines as fair to the ignorant as gold to the goldsmiths.

Elizabeth I

#13. A real miracle's a reminder and a warning that the line that separates the possible from the impossible isn't as firm as we like to think it is.

Dirk Wittenborn

#14. I was a director and dialogue and acting coach.

Adriana Barraza

#15. I sometimes make pictures which are not up to my standard, but then it can only be said of a mediocrity that all his work is up to his standard.

Ernst Lubitsch

#16. There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one.

Ernst Lubitsch

#17. Religions understand that to belong to a community is both very desirable and not very easy.

Alain De Botton

#18. The job of the director is to suggest two plus two. Let the viewer say four.

Ernst Lubitsch

#19. You could name the great stars of the silent screen who were finished; the great directors gone; the great title writers who were washed up. But remember this, as long as you live: the producers didn't lose a man. They all made the switch. That's where the great talent is.

Ernst Lubitsch

#20. If I worried about what the media said I wouldn't get much sleep and I'm able to sleep pretty well.

Mitt Romney

#21. Nobody should try to play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside.

Ernst Lubitsch