Jonas Mekas Quotes

For an artist, to be normal is a disaster

In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.

My films are the celebration of reality, of life, of my friends, of actual daily life that passes and is gone tomorrow. We don't pay attention to it when it happens.

An adventurer can always return home; an exile cannot. So I decided that my home would be culture.

In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don’t care about my cinema. In Europe they don’t know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!

In a meadow full of flowers you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry of life.

The deeper I went into culture, the more confused I got. So I needed something more real. I said, "Okay, from now on, my country will be cinema."

The nature of the video camera really makes you focus on the present. Since I have always been a diarist filmmaker, not one who stages scenes with actors, it has always been about the present moment.

I'm not an abstract artist; I leave that to others. To me, abstract art ended with Kazimir Malevich's 'Black Square.' To continue it is senseless.

Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life

We are the measure of all things. And the beauty of our creation, of our art is proportional to the beauty of ourselves of our souls.

We need less perfect but more free films.

You have the possibility to give light a dimension in time.

I make home movies-therefore I live. I live - therefore I make home movies.

For me, to catch, to celebrate the reality and life and friends and everything around me the very moment it happens - that's what is, that's what I'm possessed by.

I brought Yoko Ono to New York and gave her her first job there. I was editing a magazine called Film Culture.

I began writing poetry when I was about 10. Bad poetry, but you start with bad poetry.

I missed my teenage years. I was never a teenager.

Most of my videos consist of fragments, one or two minutes long. They are haikus or sketches. I have thousands.

In 1962, we created the Filmmakers' Co-Op because nobody wanted to distribute our films. If we had the Internet in those days, we wouldn't have needed the Co-Op.

Place means nothing to me. I can be at home anywhere.

There is no other way to break the frozen cinematic conventions than through a complete derangement of the official cinematic senses.

In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry, of life.

I live, therefore I make films. I make film, therefore I live. Life. Movement. I make home movies, therefore I live. I live, therefore I make home movies.