Quentin Tarantino Quotes

I want to have the fun of doing anime and I love anime, but I can't do storyboards because I can't really draw and that's what they live and die on.

I loved the idea of the fact that the way, like I said, they colored outside of the lines. You know, there was rules that they didn't have to follow. And you got -you got - you could get more of a sensational thrill, all right, with some of these exploitation movies or art films, or you could get something you wouldn't see at the normal cineplex.

Leni Riefenstahl was the one person Goebbels had no control over in the filmmaking community of Nazi Germany, and they despised each other. But because she was Hitler's favorite, she could do what she wanted. She was the only filmmaker that did not have to cow down to Joseph Goebbels.

All my movies are achingly personal.

What the internet has done is destroy film criticism. I would never have guessed that the profession of film criticism would be going the way of the dodo bird.

I'm a human being with a conscience, and when I see murder, I cannot stand by, and I have to call the murdered the murdered, and I have to call the murderers the murderers.

I didnt go to film school, i went to films

To me, torture would be watching sports on television.

I'm very happy with the way I write. I think I do it good. But I've never really considered myself a writer.

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do, but when you try to deal with prescient themes in the present, that is what you're doing.

Apache have the strongest nation in the world behind them. So we're going to inflict pain where our European aunts and uncles had to endure it. And so the fact that you could actually get Nazis scared of a band of Jews, that's - again, that's a gigantic psychological thing.

Everything I learned as an actor, I have basically applied to writing.

Emotion will always win over coolness and cleverness. It's when a scene works emotionally and it's cool and clever, then it's great. That's what you want.

You name any horrific thing, and I can make a joke out of it.

I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay.

Violence is one of the most fun things to watch.

I'm not a huge big fan of music video.

A movie doesn't have to do everything. A movie just has to do a couple of things. If it does those things well and gives you a cool night at the movies, an emotion, that's good enough.

I don't think there's anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards - in the life of an artist.

I'm a historian in my own mind.

It hit me that an Apache resistance would be a wonderful, you know, it would be a wonderful metaphor for Jewish-American soldiers to be using behind enemy lines against the Nazis because the Apache Indians... were able to fight off for decades both the Spaniards and the Mexicans and the U.S. Cavalry for years because of their - they were great guerrilla fighters. They were great resistance fighters. And one of their ways of winning battles was psychological battles.

Particularly as a writer, it is my job to ignore social critics, or the response that social critics might have when it comes to the opinions of my characters, the way they talk, or anything that can happen to them.

If I wasn't a film-maker, I'd be a film critic. It's the only thing I'd be qualified to do.

It's nice to get invited to the parties and to be able to hobnob and celebrate a job well done with your colleagues.

When I'm writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I'm doing it, as I'm writing it.

When you gotta go out and make a movie to pay for the kid's private school and for the three ex-wives, don't talk to me about your artistry. It's their job. It's not my job. It's my calling.

Suddenly, Westerns, which were our action films and what the working man went to see to blow off steam and have a good time, became boring to most people growing up from the Eighties on, because they're kind of pastoral.

L.A. is so big that if you don't actually live in Hollywood, you might as well be from a different planet.

Everybody always talks about the science fiction genre, in particular, which always makes me think about people in spaceships. I can appreciate that, but that's not really where I think my dramatist aspect lies.

One of the things when you write, well the way I write, is that you are writing your scenario and there are different roads that become available that the characters could go down. Screenwriters will have a habit of putting road blocks up against some of those roads because basically they can't afford to have their characters go down there because they think they are writing a movie or trying to sell a script or something like that. I have never put that kind of imposition on my characters. Wherever they go I follow.

My mom took me to see Carnal Knowledge and The Wild Bunch and all these kind of movies when I was a kid.

A lot of them [Germaqn actors] could come in and we could speak for the next nine hours in English and there would be no problem. It was - but it was - English wasn't the language for them to read poetry in. And there is a - there's a poetic quality to my dialogue.

When you start writing, you have your characters on a metaphorical paved road, and as they go down it, all these other roads become available that they can go down. And a lot of writers have roadblocks in front of those roads: they won’t allow their characters to go down those roads... I’ve never put any roadblocks on any of these paths. My characters can go wherever they would naturally go, and I’ll follow them.

When I'm writing in my bedroom, in a bar, at my kitchen table or wherever, I'm conjuring it all up on the page. That's all well and good, but it is going to be a limited perspective at that point and time. Occasionally, what I write might read really well initially, but then you change your mind while hunting for locations when you discover settings which offer even better opportunities for drama or dramatic staging.

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'

As a viewer, the minute I start getting confused, I check out of the movie. Emotionally, I'm severed.

Critics don't want to see directors they like make too much of a left turn. That's good for criticism.

If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one.

I just don't feel the whole white guilt and pussy-footing around race issues. I'm completely above all that. I've never worried about what anyone might think of me 'cause I've always believed that the true of heart recognize the true of heart.

I found this really fantastic used record store in Japan, and I bought all these different records and different 45s, and one of the 45s was just, it had the theme, "Green Leaves of Summer," the theme to "The Alamo" on one side, and then on the flip side was a theme to, the theme to "The Magnificent Seven."

There`s only one list that`s more illustrious than the list of directors who won the Palme d`Or. It`s the list of directors who didn`t.

It's a standard staple in Japanese cinema to cut somebody's arm off and have red water hoses for veins, spraying blood everywhere.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

I always thought it was a B.S. thing that they didn't show it [scalping] in other Westerns, but especially if you're going to really go with the idea that we're desecrating the bodies, and the idea is to strike fear in the hearts of other German soldiers, then we had to see what they're talking about.

In polite society, there is such a thing as sensitivity to some issues, as time has gone on. There was a time when we weren't politically correct, at all, and we all wince at moments when we look to the past and see that. I don't really know what the answer is, as far as that is concerned. However, me, as an artist, I don't really think about it, at all. It actually is not my job to think about that, especially in terms of me, as a writer, but also as a filmmaker. I'm not worried about the filmmaking part because, if I'm writing it, that's what I'm going to do.

CGI has fully ruined car crashes. Because how can you be impressed with them now? When you watch them in the '70s, it was real cars, real metal, real blasts. They're really doing it and risking their lives.

To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you're writing something and you get to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can't lie. The characters have gotta be true to themselves.