Leyser Quotes

#1. The greatest danger in life is not taking chances. There are so many negative people wanting to grind you down, but you can't let them. If people say you are mad, you know you're on the right track.

Brian Blessed

#2. I like documenting people who can break away from the conformist boring world we are stuck in and either live their life in a much more far out way or create art that critiques it well.

Yony Leyser

#3. If she couldn't be with Harlen in Washington, DC, this was the place to be.
Sera's mobile screen lit, and she glanced down to find a text from him: I have to pee.

Erin Kellison

#4. It is interesting sometimes to stop and think and wonder what the place you are currently at used to be like in times past, who walked there, who worked there and what the walls have seen.

Patrick Geddes

#5. Or give your child a piggyback during leg exercises, or even your girlfriend or your wife (though not both at the same time - that could be trouble).

Mark Lauren

#6. All of William S. Burroughs friends pushed it forward and introduced me to one another. I was able to enter into that beat family for a while and document it.

Yony Leyser

#7. In truth it's difficult to describe a broken heart.

Samantha Young

#8. After I got kicked out of CalArts, I moved to Lawrence Kansas where my sister lived. I began working on A William S. Burroughs documentary. I had no idea it would turn into such a big film.

Yony Leyser

#9. Slamdance actually is indie and rebellious. Sundance obviously felt threatened.

Yony Leyser

#10. [Allen] Ginsberg totally helped that out. He was the best sales person. He was the most pop. They are still shocking and relevant, especially [William] Burroughs.

Yony Leyser

#11. I'm really happy I was kicked out of CalArts (for a controversial art piece I made).

Yony Leyser

#12. God is the "mysterium tremendum," that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.

Martin Buber

#13. I began filmmaking in high school, at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. My first documentary was about a dysfunctional obese middle-aged carpet cleaner named Bill, who lived with his Mom, and his love affair with Anna, a drug-addicted prostitute. I made that when I was 16.

Yony Leyser

#14. I'd never heard of the 'Lord of the Rings', actually. So I went to the bookstore and there it was, three shelves of books about Tolkien and Middle-earth, and I was like, 'Holy cow, what else am I missing out on?'

Sean Astin

#15. When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response.
The gray area between yes and no.
Silence.

Dan Brown

#16. When I go to the movies, I do like to see things that surprise me, a little bit, in ways that seem truthful to the world that we live in.

Todd Solondz

#17. Authors and artists are still afraid of breaking away as far as [William Burroughs] did ... And he did it in the 50s!

Yony Leyser

#18. Sundance claimed to be "rebellious" on all of their programs, but they are not. Most of the movies at Sundance were multi-million dollar pictures that were already guaranteed a theatrical release.

Yony Leyser

#19. I picked up On The Road, Howl, and Naked Lunch (in that order) in high school. I was blown away. The writing was amazing and the places it took me was even more far out. It opened up new avenues of thinking for me and so I went down the beaten road.

Yony Leyser