David Cronenberg Quotes

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.

As a filmmaker, I ask questions but don't have answers. Moviemaking is a philosophical exploration. I invite the audience to come on the journey and discover what they think and feel.

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab.

I can't imagine a life without humor. Especially if you have an existential understanding of life, you must acknowledge the absurdity of it all.

All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true.

My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There's nothing else, and when we die, that's it. No afterlife.

I like to laze around. I think that's a huge part of creativity. You have to let your mind relax and then another part of your brain suddenly connects with the solution you're trying to find.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.

Consciousness is the original sin: consciousness of the inevitability of our death.

When I am creating art, I have absolutely no social responsibility. It's like dreaming.

I'm not very well organized unless I'm plugged into a structure like the opera or a movie. When I'm doing that, I have to be organized.

I have a real aversion to ghosts because I don't believe in them. I think ghosts are actually a religious concept, because it means you believe in an afterlife. And I don't.

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult.

The artist's duty to himself is a combination of immense responsibility and immense irresponsibility. I think those two interlock.

The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That's why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.

The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.

Do you remember when you found out you wouldn't live forever? People don't talk about this, but everybody had to go through it because you're not born with that knowledge.

Even Hitchcock liked to think of himself as a puppeteer who was manipulating the strings of his audience and making them jump. He liked to think he had that kind of control.

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation.

So not only can you not imagine dying, you can't really imagine existence before you were born.

I'm very anti-religious because religion tends to disembody you.

Let's put it this way, when I was casting, I cast Viggo first and then found someone who could play his wife, rather than the other way around. So for me he's still the lead character.

Your'e seeing me develop, not only as a filmmaker if you've seen my earlier films, but you're seeing me kind of learn how to be a human, how my philosophy has evolved.

If you put yourself in a group of people you cannot work with it's obviously going to be a disaster.

The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It's not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff.

To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American.

My dentist said to me the other day: I've enough problems in my life, so why should I see your films?

I work with my dreams or nightmares.

I don't have a moral plan, I'm a Canadian.

The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting.

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

You start selling the movie before you make it.

All romances end in tragedy. One of the key people in a romance becomes a monster sooner or later.

Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.

At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible.

Many wonderful, creative people have won Oscars, so if you win one, you're in their company.

More blood! More blood!

I also think the relationship I have with my audience is a lot more complex than what Hitchcock seemed to want his to be - although I think he had more going on under the surface as well.

Long live the new flesh.

Technology is us. There is no separation. It's a pure expression of human creative will. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe. I'm rather sure of that.

I see technology as being an extension of the human body.

I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.

The internet is now a forum for public prosecution.

To not be photographed daily, even by oneself, to not be recorded and videoed and dispersed into the turbulent winds of the net, was to court nonexistence.

We’re all photojournalists now. It’s no longer enough just to write.

Send these images of me through the internet out into the universe, where I will continue my out-of-body existence.

But so strong is our desire for meaning, an innate desire, that we construct meanings where there are none.

The only authentic literature of the modern era is the owner’s manual.

Reality is neurology, and is not absolute.