Oliver Stone Quotes

One of the joys of going to the movies was that it was trashy, and we should never lose that.

Anybody who's been through a divorce will tell you that at one point. they've thought murder. The line between thinking murder and doing murder isn't that major.

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

Hell is the impossibility of reason.

If you make the movie from your heart and it stands over time, that's what matters to me.

I'm a dramatist. Dramatists have a right to look at history and interpret it the way they see it.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works.

Every day that you get up, it's some kind of victory if you're making a good product, or working on a project that can only help mankind.

I think our life is a series of adventures.

The worst nightmare I ever had about Vietnam was that I had to go back. I woke up in a sweat, in total terror.

Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies.

Forget the grand plan. Forget the master scheme. Forget control. That is the bleak but true basis of independent cinema. Inch by motherfuking inch we must, because we have no other choice.

Fear may very well be a caveman fear of the predator, of the giant lizard chasing them - maybe that's what Steven Spielberg connects with so well in Lost World.

We all know what we know. We experience with our minds and breath.

I've been to war, and it's not easy to kill. It's bloody and messy and totally horrifying, and the consequences are serious.

I might as well be myself. Everyone else is taken.

The first casualty of war is innocence.

There's an electrical thing about movies.

You can never judge how the film will be taken; you can only make your best effort, and put out what you feel. How it's read, you never can tell. Or remembered for that matter.

But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing.

I make my films like you're going to die if you miss the next minute. You better not go get popcorn.

I do believe there are leaders who are like lightning and they come along and they lead. The Lincolns of the world, the Alexander the Greats, they do exist. They have existed.

It's interesting that when economic times were the hardest, that's when many people embraced liberalism.

Conspiracy nut, leftist, madman. These are terms of dismissal so you don't have to listen to the argument. It would be healthier and more fun to hear what someone has to say.

I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power.

We are seeing entertainment become politics and we're seeing people acting out in ways that are extremely violent and destabilizing. No rules apply. We're in an era of no rules now, it seems.

The past assumes the nature of the present.

I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

Each year, the The U.S. Army & its contractors SHOOT, STAB, MUTILATE, & KILL more than TEN THOUSAND live animals in cruel training exercises.

I'd like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you'd sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling.

Unfortunately, the truth is that people do go scot-free and it's unfair. A lot of the top drug people who have been arrested are also free.

When I make a new movie, I always get stuck with, "That's not an Oliver Stone film." But I don't know what to do about that except just move on.

I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history.

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.

One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia.

I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations.

Now, we live in an age where we have so much information that we do tend to overload. The Greeks did too, though.

With television, the image has been degenerated, no question. With the internet, commercials... people are much too cynical about image. It's stale. And all over the world, not just America.

I love the act of writing. I like the quiet, internal aspect of it. If I lost track of that, I couldn't direct the same way. I couldn't be a director for-hire; it's just not my nature.

I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter. But you learn as you go, I suppose.

I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter.

I think everyone has the same question on their mind: Is the glass half-full or half-empty?

People are still living in the moment, and they feel the passion of now.

I'm interested, I suppose, in tortured power.

I'm terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily.

As a dramatist, I don't have politics.

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.