Spike Jonze Quotes

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.

Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.

When I first moved up to San Francisco to write Where The Wild Things Are, I had a couple moments where I talked to somebody, and they're like, "Oh, I love that book. I love this part of it," or, "This is what it means to me." And it's like, "Well, I don't know. I guess that's not what I'm making the movie about." But very early on, I don't know, we sort of let go of that fear.

What the world is like from a nine-year-old's point of view? My memory is that nothing is explained to you, you've got to try to figure it out, pick up clues from the people around you, try to figure it out from their reactions.

Don't differentiate between 'This is a job' and 'This is what I'm doing for fun.' It's all simultaneous.

I feel like you only have so much time to make stuff. I'm definitely aware of that. I'm also excited about it.

I like hiring people based on a feeling - this person gets it - rather than what they've done in the past.

I just want to make whatever is exciting.

I feel like everything I make is personal to me.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

The invention of the iPod changes how you use music. Suddenly you have music everywhere.

Be willing to get fired for a good idea.

I like naps. I don't drink coffee.

If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself.

On everything I do I'm always taking someone's money, whether it's a movie studio or a record label. Somebody's paying for it, and I'm always respectful of that. But I'm never going to compromise.

I am better at math than spelling.

If I can make one generalised statement, and generalised statements are never entirely true, nobody wants to be talked down to, kids included.

Finding a kid that could be introspective and internal and thoughtful, and then also be wild and free and guileless and physical, it was hard. So at the end we started getting down to panic time, and we still hadn't found our Max. And we decided to go about it a different way. We said, "Let's just find friends of ours that live in interesting cities in the country that maybe aren't as big, and people that don't do casting." And thinking maybe you find a place that has an artistic community, maybe we'll find some interesting kids from there.

I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.

Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.

The past is just a story we tell ourselves.

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it.

Where The Wild Things Are we were asking a lot of a 9-year-old kid. We were asking a lot of any actor.

If you compromise what you're trying to do just a little bit, you'll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you're suddenly really far away from where you're trying to go.

I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around.

I was lucky enough to know Maurice Sendak, and talked to him about doing the movie. For a while, I was really apprehensive of it, because Where The Wild Things Are is a book I love so much, and I didn't want to add something to it just to be able to make a movie, or put my stamp on it, or something like that.

Felt is not the easiest thing to animate. It's very flimsy.

I definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring.

I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older.

As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

I think because I'm not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.

The fact that Maurice Sendak said, "This is something that I made at your age, this was something that was personal to me, and now you need to take it and make something that's personal to you." I don't know, but we made the Where The Wild Things Are movie that we set out to make, and Maurice loves it. If Maurice was anxious about it, then I would be petrified.

The things that are really out of control, and scary, are emotions - of people around you, that are unpredictable, or those in yourself which are unpredictable.

You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.

Even in this world where you’re getting everything you need and having this nice life, there’s still loneliness and longing and disconnection.

It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.