Philosophical Sayings

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…

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 al…

Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating.

every feeling is the perception of a truth...

imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful resource of the divine intellect, almost an amphibian between being and non-being.

For I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.

The words 'Here you can find perfect peace' can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.

Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.

Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.

The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony.