Top 100 Quotes About Directing
#1. I really love diving in, head first, with directing and not having to worry about hair, makeup or lines.
Chris Lowell
#2. Alan Alda and his wife Arlene are two of the most life-affirming people I've ever met. He espoused equal rights for women while producing, writing, acting in and directing 'M*A*S*H'; he used to commute between the set and home because he didn't want to disrupt his kids' schooling.
Sanjeev Bhaskar
#3. Directing non-actors is difficult. Directing actors in a foreign language is even more difficult. Directing non-actors in a language that you yourself don't understand is the craziest thing you can possibly think of.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#4. Laying down a challenge means more than directing people to do it. It includes asking the hard questions that no one yet has the answers to and then backing off so that the people within the organization have the space to think through the questions, take ownership, and find the answers.
Liz Wiseman
#5. When I'm directing I'm working from 100% of my brain, but when I'm acting I'm working from my heart.
Matthew Gray Gubler
#6. Directing television is really hard - it's so fast. You shoot an hour show in seven days.
Steve Buscemi
#7. I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.
Nicholas Stoller
#8. I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.
Guillermo Del Toro
#9. Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh with the object of gaining experience in worlds below the spiritual, in order that he may be able to master and to rule them, and in later ages take his place in the creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.
Annie Besant
#10. I think it's a very strange question that I have to defend myself. I don't feel that. You are all my guests, it's not the other way around, that's how I feel.
Lars Von Trier
#11. I actually have two children now, and sometimes I wonder if that's it. Because they do make writing and directing more complicated and more difficult, especially now that they're very young.
Diablo Cody
#12. In film, I don't think I'd try directing. Maybe one day, but I'd certainly want to go to film school or something before I tried to do something like that. That would be quite scary.
Amelia Warner
#13. Dude, writing, acting and directing are such easy jobs. But to do them all as awesomely as Zach Braff does, well that ... that's something.
Zach Braff
#14. The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis.
John Green
#15. It's really fun to go back and forth from acting projects to directing projects. You don't have as much responsibility when you're acting, but you have more fun. But then you miss having that responsibility, and so you go back and torture yourself and make a movie.
Katie Aselton
#16. I always wanted to write movies that I'd direct. I didn't come at it from a writing standpoint more than a directing standpoint, except that growing up, I didn't have the opportunity to shoot as much as I did to write.
Noah Baumbach
#17. I started as an actor, then became a theater director. I loved acting but didn't feel as confident as I needed to be, so I started directing theater; then I played in some movies, and then I felt the need to do my own stuff.
Baltasar Kormakur
#18. I started directing out of necessity, the first play I wrote in college because I didn't know anyone who could direct it.
Conor McPherson
#19. I make something I can look at and say, "That's a good piece of work, and there's some terrific directing and acting in it, and you should be proud of it."
Wes Craven
#20. I was born in Ballaghadreen, but I grew up in Galway, and when I went to the University College of Galway, I became involved in the drama society there and started directing plays.
Garry Hynes
#21. I'm interested in directing attention and focus, explored through playing cello.
Joshua Roman
#22. The secret of directing is working with really good people.
George Clooney
#24. When I made 'Terminator 3,' I learned something about directing actors to behave like robots. And one of the key things I learned is that if an actor tries to play a robot, he or she risks playing it mechanically in a way that makes the performance uninteresting.
Jonathan Mostow
#25. Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.
John Ford
#26. I have no interest in directing. I've no talent for it.
Victor Garber
#27. I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.
Vikram Rohit Shetty
#29. I enjoy doing my more intimate and less commercial pictures and also I enjoy directing.
Sarah Polley
#30. One thing that everybody told me about directing was, 'Never compromise'. And the whole job is a compromise. So it's very paradoxical. How do you not compromise when the whole thing is about compromise?
Matt Dillon
#31. Being a doctor has taught me a lot about directing. You're doing the same thing: You're reconstructing the manifold of behavior to the point where an audience says, yes, that's exactly like people I know.
Jonathan Miller
#32. I think once we started directing separately - we each have different kinds of interests now, and the kinds of movies we want to do. I wouldn't hold your breath for that one.
David Zucker
#33. A conductor can do wild things which can feel forced, but if you're directing from within the orchestra, you can't do that, things have to feel natural.
Joshua Bell
#35. Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal.
H.G.Wells
#36. I went from sort of trying to get work to all of a sudden being signed up for the next few years on something, and something of this scale with some of the best people in the business involved, acting and directing. It was a dream.
Chris Hemsworth
#37. The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.
David O. Russell
#38. I've acted just to get to directing.
Mel Ferrer
#39. I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.
Peter Jackson
#40. I can't tell you if one day I'll be standing up there with an Oscar or directing, but I am going to be the best human being I possibly can.
Terrence Howard
#41. I have my writing and acting and producing and directing, and my younger brother has his music and his acting.
Kevin Schmidt
#42. I went to New York City to Columbia University, and with the first directing exercise, I knew I was a director.
Patricia Riggen
#43. Directing is so interesting. You know, it just sort of encompasses everything that you see, that you know, that you've felt, that you have observed.
Barbra Streisand
#44. A sense of solitude is one of the most beautiful things that parents can give a child. It doesn't mean leaving the child alone, but it does mean creating safe spaces where the child can be with other people. It does mean directing their attention to God.
Henri Nouwen
#45. I don't want to say I'm never going to direct again, but directing's hard work.
Kyle Chandler
#46. My hands are already full writing and directing, because that's a full time job. Actually, that's why I don't produce as well, as there's already enough producers.
David Twohy
#47. People still make New Year's resolutions? Wow. I figured those were pointless once I perfected myself by directing, writing, and acting in Garden State. I guess it makes sense, though. It gives people a chance to hope that they can become as great as me someday.
Zach Braff
#48. Showtime has given new, young filmmakers - black, white, across the board - an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.
Morris Chestnut
#49. I don't like waiting around for work, and sometimes as an actor you're forced into that position, so that's sort of how I got into writing, producing and directing.
Thomas Ian Nicholas
#50. I enjoy directing more when I don't have to direct myself. I like when I can just be the director.
Salli Richardson
#51. I don't direct so that I can have an identity and so I can go on to CGI movies. I had a big identity as an actor, and that's not what I'm looking for from directing. Directing is a whole different goal.
Jodie Foster
#52. The last jobs I had were fixing cars and covering football games for a local access TV station. As in driving the mobile van to the field, setting up 3 cameras, teaching depressed grownups and interns how to use them and directing the game from the van and then wanting to kill myself.
Louis C.K.
#53. I'm not a preacher and I'm not a pastor. But I really feel my career was leading me to make this. The Holy Ghost was working through me on this film, and I was just directing traffic. I hope the film has the power to evangelize.
Mel Gibson
#54. I love doing different things where, for a little while, I can focus on standup then sketch writing, then performing, then directing a video. That, to me, is stimulating.
Kyle Dunnigan
#55. I feel responsible for everybody, and I couldn't imagine a scenario where I wouldn't be directing what was happening, at the end.
Greg Daniels
#56. Insofar as I'm good at directing, it's because I've become a writer.
David Hare
#57. I have a great team. A lot of my focus every day is with my television and film career, directing and producing, and I guess you can say that my moonlighting gig is Tropfest. Obviously, when I am not working I am in the Tropfest office full-time.
John Polson
#58. The film [Close Up] made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn't directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.
Abbas Kiarostami
#59. My dream is to do exactly what I'm doing. I love writing and directing, and being somebody that can write about an artist I love or make a film about it. That's great. I would leave the other stuff to those who do it much better.
Cameron Crowe
#60. Do not let your to-do list (written or mental) become an idol directing your life. Instead, ask My Spirit to guide you moment by moment.
Sarah Young
#61. I don't really like directing. I've had a good relationship with actors, but I can do what I do and back off. I don't want that much romancing. I don't want them to call me up at two in the morning saying, 'I don't know who I am.
Gordon Willis
#62. I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.
Baz Luhrmann
#63. The Directing and Penetrating Vessels originate from the Lower Dan Tian [literally 'Bao'].
Giovanni Maciocia
#64. And what if neutrinos in their uncountable multitudinous dark-matteredness gravitationally directing the universe ... are the souls of the dead?
E.L. Doctorow
#65. Even if people are all from the same place, there can be very, very different approaches. It's one of the things I'm fascinated by. It's why I like directing. I like to see how different people approach trying to be truthful, on camera or in the theater, and whether you can make them match up.
Kenneth Branagh
#66. I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.
Gavin Bryars
#67. Whether it's acting, directing or writing, I want to be involved in the film industry for the rest of my life.
Tom Felton
#68. I was on cruise control from '85 to '95, and it was my fault. There were a lot of self-inflicted wounds, when I was not doing any original material. I wasn't directing. I wasn't writing. That's not who I am.
Sylvester Stallone
#69. I do not know if it is true that all actors want to direct and all directors want to act, but in 1972 I tried directing and decided I had better stick to acting.
James Earl Jones
#70. I'm no Kenneth Branagh or Ben Stiller. I'm not that single-minded, 'I'm producing it, directing it, and starring in it' kind of person; that's not me.
Tom Hollander
#71. I love writing. I think writing and directing go hand in hand.
David Labrava
#72. [2] or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of
Virginia Woolf
#73. With directing, you have to wake up early, which stinks, but you get to hang out with the crew, you're laughing, you're active, and you're working with the actors. It's just more fun than writing. Writing is very hard.
Amy Sherman-Palladino
#74. I like directing myself; I feel like it's one less person to give notes to. There's an efficiency in it. I'm also kind of a control freak. So I like the fact that it gives me more control in the overall picture.
Alex Karpovsky
#75. Anger is a fuel. You need fuel to launch a rocket. But if all you have is fuel without any complex internal mechanism directing it, you don't have a rocket. You have a bomb
Stanley Bing
#77. The vast difference between starting a train of events, and directing into a particular groove a series already started, is rarely apparent to the person confounded by the issue.
Thomas Hardy
#78. Directing is definitely something that is in my life for keeps, and the more I do it, the more I realize how much I want to learn and how much I have to give. And it kind of bolsters my acting - it enhances it in a really wonderful way that I wasn't expecting.
Carrie Preston
#79. I approach directing from an actor's standpoint.
Derek Magyar
#80. When I'm directing actors, I often find myself slipping in sports metaphors, like: 'Don't go for the punch line here, just put it up on a T-ball stand so she can hit it out of the park.'
Mark Waters
#81. Writing, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying.
Jennifer Jason Leigh
#82. It is a glorious thing to know that your Father God makes no mistakes in directing or permitting that which crosses the path of your life. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter. It is our glory to trust Him, no matter what.
Joni Eareckson Tada
#83. you may be wrong to be right in the wrong direction, but, what is the wrong direction?
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#84. I love directing, It means so much to me to direct stories about subject matter that I care deeply about. I can act in many things, and you can try to experience different characters, but to direct is years of your life and you have to really love it and believe in it.
Angelina Jolie
#85. It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.
Herman Melville
#86. I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.
Werner Herzog
#87. 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
#88. One's character is one's habitual way of behaving. We all have patterns of behavior or habits, and often we are quite unaware of them. When Socrates urged us to Know thyself, he clearly was directing us to come to know our habitual ways of responding to the world around us.
Thomas Lickona
#89. Though the legs of a football coach are never so active on the field of play during playing time, his mind is the best or worse player on the pitch!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#90. I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.
Steven Spielberg
#91. Schools should take an active part in directing social change, and share in the construction of a new social order
John Dewey
#92. The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously moulding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way. Given
George Orwell
#93. I did a film that I shot in 24 hours that was self-financed for $5,000. It was a feature called Looking For Jimmy that I shot with a bunch of friends. I spent eight months editing because we had 24 hours of footage that made no sense and I learned a lot about directing while editing that film.
Julie Delpy
#94. Quentin looked curiously around. "This is a neat room," he said.
"Yes, it is," I replied, directing my compliment toward the distant ceiling. Everyone deserves a few compliments. Even a building.
Seanan McGuire
#95. 'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.
Lenny Abrahamson
#96. Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.
Ang Lee
#97. Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism ... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young.
Henry Seidel Canby
#98. When I'm directing films, I mostly try to create an environment on set that mimics what's in my mind as to the tone and feel of things. I try to create a place where you feel that anything's possible.
Harmony Korine
#99. How could you have had such a wonderful life as me if there wasn't a God directing?
Maureen O'Hara
#100. An acting career usually has about a shelf life of ten years before people get sick of seeing you. It's a good thing to have a job to fall back on and I really do enjoy directing.
George Clooney
