Al Stone Quotes

You always try to find the right style for the movie. That's the key.

Every movie requires its own style. Just be honest to the story. Tell the story in the best possible way that is different, exciting and original.

Television has usurped everybody from film. And so have commercials, by the way.

From '45, the moment Franklin Roosevelt dies, we're running ratlines with the Germans, helping Nazis escape.

I don't want to make a half-assed film. It's not my area of expertise.

I'm a history person; I love history. But I am conditioned by the present.

I am a storyteller, and I do love ideas.

What I've experienced, I'm trying to put in a narrative form, I suppose, to say that it does make sense in this way.

I look at Homer and The Odyssey and all the disparate adventures this guy goes through, and then he returns home and the question is, is he the same man who left?

There is a narrative to every life, and I believe in the classic mode of storytelling that goes back to Homer and carries through to today.

The Greek playwrights, we're all beholden to them, every one of us.

Just because we live in a Christian era doesn't mean we're all Christian, necessarily.

Christianity did take a lot of Greek concepts.

Concepts of integrity and heroism and honor are still important to the world today. Some people behave well, and some people behave badly.

I think a lot of people misunderstand what I'm doing, because my films are not easy sometimes. They do deserve a second viewing. I think they get misunderstood easily.

I see films in theaters, and I enjoy films. I enjoy the art of storytelling, and the different ways to tell them.

Every time you go into a movie, you go into the point of view of who it is about.

As a dramatist, I don't have politics.

You get much more heat when you do something current.

I think there is a whole older generation that will go to movies still. People like me; people over 45.

Pat Nixon was called the Mona Lisa of American politics. She never wrote anything. Her interviews tell us nothing.

It was a tough experience with Alan Horn, who didn't like anything that was R-rated. So you can imagine he hated some of my films.

A life like Nixon's is filled with shame and filled with glory. He loved to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "He was a man; sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but he was a man." I love that line.

I've met people who will go to a movie that I can't stand and they say that they saw that movie ten times. There's something they like and identified in that movie, and I don't see it.

I'd love to do historical pictures more, but I don't know if I can.

When I was a child, I'd see a movie, I took it for what it was, I enjoyed it. And if I believed it I would tend to be more interested in knowing more about it.

The truth is not being aired in the West. It’s a surreal perversion of history that’s going on once again, as in Bush pre-Iraq ‘WMD’ campaign.

I don't think most people in the US realize how important WikiLeaks is and why Julian's case needs support.

Independence is a state of mind. Independence is spirit without category.

[Fidel Castro] has a very good [human rights] record.

Obama took a bad situation and, in certain ways, made it worse. ... I find Obama scary in a way that I had not done in 2008.

By creating false environment of a war on drugs, and cruel and unusual punishment with these crimes, 50% of our U.S. population is in jail without having hurt anybody, mostly for drugs.

We all have idealism. We think we're healthy and then, all of a sudden, one day, you have cancer. The truth has a mind of its own.

I'm going to hold onto my Blu-ray collection because I really think it's hardware and it's important. I don't want to live in a cloud, all my life.

You don't always have to have an e-book. You can have a real book. I'd like to see the old way maintain.

This myth that America has this atomic bomb that makes us right, it makes us good, it makes us set the agenda for the world. Everywhere, we can go global, we determine.

I couldn't despise a man more than George W. Bush.

What Chavez has done [in Venezuela] is that he has brought extreme poverty to an end.

I was lost, and that war [in Vietnam] was very alienating - not that I was against it or for it, but I was just lost after that war. As were many Americans.

We should look to (Castro) as one of the Earth's wisest people, one of the people we should consult.

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

What is worst about America was acted out. What is best in America doesn't export.

It's easy to create a country, all you have to do is to think of a name for it

It’s hard to stay away from religion when you mess with acid.

I think there's a necessity for some attachment to the spiritual world and, in a way, people really have to have it.

Writing and directing has always been my first passion. That's where the focus of my energy is.

I used to want to pack as much as I could into my life, but now I realize it's more about quality of life than quantity.

People are really emotionally affected by actors. And it's hard to know how to behave in a way that doesn't impose or withdraw. Because everybody wants your attention.

Any man in Hollywood will meet me if I want that. No, make that any man anywhere.

It's funny, but I never knew I was hot or could be beautiful until I saw 'Basic Instinct,' and I was so shocked when I saw how pretty they made me.