Atom Egoyan Quotes

There is a certain moment in the film when the son is in the nursing home and he goes to the television and turns it off because he sees himself in the image.

You can talk about Holocaust denial, but it's really marginal for the most part. What is compelling about the Armenian genocide, is how it has been forgotten.

Right now my career is totally schizophrenic, because when an American production like Hitchcock Presents asks to see my work I would never dream of showing them my independent films.

Don’t get depressed about not being where you want to be. This nagging feeling of anxiety is actually called ambition. Ambition is your friend.

The fathers greatest folly is that he believes he can be a much more simple person than he is; he is not really able to deal with his own complexity as a human being.

It is about this very abstract sense of displacement that he feels the moment he turns off the television.

When you're working with a smaller budget I suppose one of the things that has to be in your mind when you are writing is that you have to keep the characters down to a minimum.

I wanted to make sure that the environment of the shooting itself was not that controlled, and the way to go about that course was to work with as small a crew as possible.

I think the situation in Toronto is such that there are funding organizations which make it easy for a film to raise more money than it needs and very often that works against a film.

When I was planning Family Viewing, the Ontario Film Development Corporation came into existence.

That's a very odd notion because it involves seeing money up there on the screen - if something cost $5 million to make, they want to see that $5 million up there.

I believe my signal of maturity as a filmmaker iswhen I'll actually acknowledge the fact that the first take is usuallythe best.

My parents taught me to believe that through the creative act, we're able to transcend and give a response to desecration.

I find it deeply upsetting when I see justice not being served. How do we as human beings deal with the unknown? The West Memphis Three trial is a joke on so many different levels.

I love when people are resilient and when they form ways of dealing with grief or dealing with some traumatic episode, and sometimes those are the wrong choices.

Try to produce your own films, avoid directing for hire.

I just think I love the process of making films. It's not tortuous for me at all. I love being with my crew. I love actors. There's a joy to the process.

We're lucky to be making films. My crew and I have been working together for a long time. I think that that's what emanates.

I started in theater and I wanted to write plays, but I never really found an original voice as a playwright.

I think ultimately if you have a very high expectation of your audience and you know exactly what it is you're trying to express through the medium of film, there will always be an audience for you.

The biggest problem with the independent film sector in Toronto is that they find themselves having to make that budget show on screen.

Sometimes you think you want to know something, but it's actually more exciting and more resonant when you have to try [and figure it out].

I do think you fall in love when you feel that something of your story is being listened to for the first time, or you feel someone else is hearing it as no one else has ever done.

I make my living doing freelance directing for North American television shot in Toronto, series like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone, and so forth.

Working on the themes I was interested in, through the context of a particular family, was a very economical way of dealing with a lot of the issues I was concerned with.

The directing process is often a continuation of the writing. This is just a different skill-set.