Minghella Quotes

#1. Max Minghella is a very close friend of mine, and I talk to him regularly.

Oscar Isaac

#2. When I auditioned with Anthony Minghella (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency), I loved the audition process, although I hated him for it. Because he had me audition six times for that role. Maybe three hours each. He wanted to see how quickly I could vary.

Jill Scott

#3. I've always found that acting has been quite a hard thing to pre-manage because so much of it is spontaneous and the circumstances so uncontrolled.

Max Minghella

#4. I don't hold with the notion that only bad books make good movies.

Anthony Minghella

#5. Look at it this way: if you write the novel of 'Cold Mountain,' it costs exactly the same to produce and market as a novel set in a room. If you make the film, the disparity of costs is huge.

Anthony Minghella

#6. My grandmother was a huge influence on me and the fact that there was this very strong, rather formidable presence of women in my life has been an enormous value.

Anthony Minghella

#7. I think it'd be pretty unrealistic to think we're the only planet in the world with thinking beings. It's kind of a strange conceit. Especially given how many universes there must be.

Max Minghella

#8. The imaginative leap for me of writing for women is no more difficult than the one of writing for men. I've always wanted to have women well represented in the work that I've done because I've always been around them and around the way they look at the world.

Anthony Minghella

#9. I think we all want to find the love of our life and live our fantasies. What art student hasn't used his art to get girls? What journalists or actors haven't used their craft as well? It's a very human instinct to pursue.

Max Minghella

#10. I was one of five very clever kids, the other kids were cleverer than I was and still are and are very achieving. The girls were always first at everything and I was always 101st!

Anthony Minghella

#11. I always prefer shooting on locations, because when I'm at home, it's harder to sort of get lost in the world of whatever you're making. It does, it does force this bond and community amongst a group.

Max Minghella

#12. I have no agenda at all. I just want to do stuff I like. It can cost $200 million or $200 thousand.

Max Minghella

#13. Being a writer-director can sometimes make you incredibly blinkered.

Anthony Minghella

#14. I want to tell stories which require something of an audience, by way of thought, argument, emotion, because I'm more often in an audience than I am a maker of films, and that's the kind of movie I want to see.

Anthony Minghella

#15. Waiting is part of writing. When I write the word 'waiting' by hand it even looks like 'writing.'

Anthony Minghella

#16. I work fitfully, in hope rather than in expectation, invent methods which last a week, and fill notebooks with tiny, illegible writing which often defies my own attempts to decipher it.

Anthony Minghella

#17. Of course, like all film-makers I've been mesmerised by cinema since I was a child.

Anthony Minghella

#18. It's surreal working with people you admire. I don't think it ever goes away, no matter how human people are; there's always that moment of 'Oh wow, that's still George Clooney!' But I find that the most talented people tend to be the nicest.

Max Minghella

#19. I'm so disappointed in the frat parties at Columbia. I'm like an English boy going to an American college. I'm thinking cheerleaders, I'm thinking kegs. That's not what's on the cards.

Max Minghella

#20. I had never thought of myself as a director and found out that I was not. I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write.

Anthony Minghella

#21. There's a great tradition at the BFI of giving fellowships and I thought one of the great jobs that I'd have at the BFI would be to give them out on a regular basis.

Anthony Minghella

#22. I always listen to music, my passion and vice is music, I will be denied access to heaven because of the number of CDs I own, and I have gluttony for all types and colours of music.

Anthony Minghella

#23. I never feel more myself than when I'm writing; I never enjoy any day more than a good writing day.

Anthony Minghella

#24. I wanted to write in film or something like that. I thought acting was an embarrassing thing to say you wanted to do, especially when you're young. It seemed really uncool.

Max Minghella

#25. No studio in Hollywood wanted 'Cold Mountain.' None. No one wanted 'Ripley,' no one wanted 'The English Patient.' That tells you there isn't really an appetite for ambitious movie-making out there.

Anthony Minghella

#26. The weird thing about acting is you're the most competent when you're at your best, but you have to be validated.

Max Minghella

#27. The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.

Anthony Minghella

#28. When I became the chair of the British Film Institute, I didn't understand how much of my time would be taken up with trying to make a case for the British Film Institute: what it's for, why it exists, why it needs its money.

Anthony Minghella

#29. As a teenager I was obsessed with music and with writing and performing songs.

Anthony Minghella

#30. Once you start to realize that a film is the sum of its editing, then editing is the thing you're always looking at.

Anthony Minghella

#31. Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace.

Anthony Minghella

#32. You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that.

Anthony Minghella

#33. The feeling of not belonging, of not being entirely worthy, of being sometimes hostage to your own sensibilities. Those things speak to me very personally.

Anthony Minghella

#34. The problem with growing up in a cafe was the cafe never closed, my parents worked every day of the year from morning to night. So it was a big menagerie of kids, business and cooking!

Anthony Minghella

#35. [Abbas Kiarostami] is a great artist and a poet. I sometimes think that if Samuel Beckett made films, he'd make them like Kiarostami makes them.

Anthony Minghella

#36. The BFI exists to celebrate all poets of world cinema, of the past and present.

Anthony Minghella