John Sayles Quotes

38 quotes in 614 categories

• I remember being out here at the Sunset Marquis, and whoever knocked on the door, I would take that picture that I was writing and…
• I figured somebody wrote a story who had a typewriter and I thought that movies were made by the cowboys and that they just said,…
• I've always felt like I was on the margins. Once upon a time that's what independent used to mean.
• When I was really young I didn't know that there was such a thing as a screenwriter. I wrote stories.
• Assumptions allow the best in life to pass you by.
• The media in America has become so cowed and compromised.
• I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There…
• I made it about a three-day weekend so people wouldn't have to change their clothes a lot. We didn't have an art department; we didn't…
• We just said, 'Okay, you're in the movie. Bring what you would bring for a three-day weekend and I hope you like the way you…
• Fahrenheit 9/11 took public domain information that should have been on the news every night and put it in a film that a lot of…
• Michael Moore, whether you like him or hate him, has done something very important.
• There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying, How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What…
• But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were…
• I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I…
• It's a mixed crowd at the dogs - black, white, hispanic - but to Walt they all look like Jackie Gleason. Heavyset guys with big…
• I like to act. I work for scale. I don't have an acting agent. I'm in the book.
• I probably wouldn't have done as many as I did in one year, which I did when I was trying to raise money.
• For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I…
• I certainly grew up seeing more movies and television than I read books, but when it came time to do the thing itself you don't…
• I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with…

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