Quentin Tarantino

If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can't help but make a good movie. You don't have to go to school, you don't have to know a lens... none of that shit's important.

I'm never bothered that people say I don't make films 'from life' and that I have 'nothing to say.' I don't try to say anything but to create characters and to tell stories out of which meaning can appear. What's more, I think I make films about life since I make films about me, about what interests me.

My movies are very personal. I'm working in a genre, no doubt about it... but to me all the movies are very personal.

Anything that I'm not interested in, I can't even feign interest. I can't do just this little bit to just get by.

In real life there are no bad guys. Everybody just has their own perspective.

Failure brings great rewards - in the life of an artist.

Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character.

I think every movie is a genre movie. A John Cassavetes movie is a genre movie—it's a John Cassavetes Movie. That's a genre in and of itself.

To me they're all living inside of this one universe. And it isn't [pointing out the window] out there. Well, it's a little bit out there, and it's also there, too [points at his TV], in the movies, and it's also in here [points to his head]. It's all three.

I just realized that I need to be a director for two reasons. One, directors were already my heroes at this point. I wanted to - when I wanted to be an actor I wanted to work with this director. Not work with this actor, I wanted to work for this director.

I didn't start a family until late in life. I've been -- I've always kind of equated -- if you're doing movies on, you know, on the level that I've been doing, actually at the level I've been allowed to do, it's -- I equate it to mountain climbing.

When I start writing I write these crazy novels. And I don't know what to do about it. Well, write a novel. That's what you can do, write a novel. And don't make a movie out of it.

I don't believe at all in test screenings or sneak previews where you hand out questionnaires to the viewers to get their reactions.

When a man of principle battles a scoundrel, the scoundrel always at first has the upper hand. Because there are some things the man of principle won't do.