Richard Linklater Quotes

Before Sunrise did very well internationally. It made as much in Italy and Korea as it did here.

I want to make a film about a factory worker.

Being alone is better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely.

It's luck that one thing works out and one doesn't, it's sort of happenstance.

I'd like to quit thinking of the present as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.

Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.

The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you can do anything.

I think maybe making films is something innate you can't really teach to begin with.

The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure, while always arriving.

The rules of parenting have changed. By the modern definition, we were a generation of neglected children.

Filmmakers are going to make films, just like painters are going to paint.

I've always liked the minds of criminals, they seem similar to artists.

It's disappointing to see films become pure entertainment, so that it's not an art form.

I didn't have any set idea of what kind of filmmaker I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to tell stories that meant something to me, but I never said I was going to be the weird, avant-garde guy.

No one is asking what happened to all the homeless. No one cares, because it's easier to get on the subway and not be accosted.

It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism.

I've always been most interested in the politics of everyday life: your relation to whatever you're doing, or what your ambitions are, where you live, where you find yourself in the social hierarchy.

Yeah, a memory's never finished, if you really think about it.

In a sea of stories, find the right one to tell, and the right way to tell it.

Well, you have to keep your faith in the fact that there are a lot of intelligent people who are actively looking for something interesting, people who have been disappointed so many times.

Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size.

Your friends are really an extension of your vision of the world. It's kind of a physical manifestation of how you feel. Like your soul.

The worst thing is that you used to be able to show interesting films on campuses. Those places are all gone.

I worked offshore as an oil worker for a couple of years.

As a teenager, I wanted to write novels. By college, it was theater, plays, and then, shortly, it was film.

I always sensed instinctively from the earliest age that I was being lied to.

If we're all going to die, shouldn't we be enjoying ourselves now?

When you're in love, you're asking someone else to fulfill all your unfulfilled needs, to make you whole, and to make you feel good about everything, and no one can do that.

I think I got really lucky with Slacker. That was a film that probably shouldn't have been seen.

There are so many great artists, I think, who kind of suffer from being icons, legends, acknowledged masters.

We all give ourselves a lot of leeway, but we want consistency from other people.

The truth will only be told over a career.

Something about Texas I'm not proud of is that our state murdered 37 people last year alone.

If you establish rules and play by them, the audience will buy in.

People think drama drives story, but I think the comedy is really the heart and soul.

Monogamy, monotony. There's only a couple of letters...

I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.

I've never been a guy who had more than a toe in Hollywood anyway, so my toe is more easily lopped off than most.

I think you get in trouble if you make experimental big studio films.

I do find myself at the moment, due to the success of School of Rock, to be on people's radar a little.

The big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what’s the right way to tell a particular story.

Hollywood has a way of sucking the world's talent to it.

I did The Newton Boys and during the whole process of making the film, I may have spent a week in Los Angeles.

…[Thomas Wolfe] says that we are the sum of all the moments of our lives, and that, uh, anybody who sits down to write is gonna use the clay of their own life, that you can’t avoid that.

Everyone is encouraged to see their lives, the world through the eyes of the rich.

It has to be very tight to seem loose.

I think I’m always so much more happy with books and movies and stuff. I think I get more excited about well-done representations of life than life itself.- Celine

I've always been interested in the industrialization of our food it's been an issue for me from an environmental and animal rights and human health perspective.

At some point, you're no longer growing up, you're aging. But no one can pinpoint that moment exactly.

They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?